The Southwestern Sales Corporation – owned by William G. Skelly, founder of Skelly Oil and the Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, and owner of local radio station KVOO (1170 AM, now KOTV) – filed the initial permit application on June 27, 1952, one week before the FCC released a Report and Order reallocation memorandum that lifted a four-year moratorium on new television broadcast license applications.

(This effectively resulted in the channel 23 allocation being granted to Albec Oil Company founder/owner J. Elfred Beck, who launched KCEB on that frequency on March 13, 1954.

)[6] The Oil Capital Television Corporation – a group led by several Tulsa businessmen including Fred Jones, owner of local car dealership Fred Jones Ford and half-owner of KFMJ (1050 AM, now KGTO); Tom P. McDermott, director of the Independent Tire Dealers Association; Charles L. McMahon Jr., founder of C. L. McMahon Inc. Oil Producers; insurance executive Dan P. Holmes; and L. Francis Rooney, president of the Manhattan Construction Company – concurrently became the third applicant for the license.

On December 11 of that year, TulsaVision Inc. became the first to withdraw its application, after having earlier applied to have its bid dismissed by the FCC due to ongoing health issues that Mabee was going through at the time.

(KOTV – which had been carrying select NBC programs since that station's sign-on – continued to maintain a secondary NBC affiliation after KCEB debuted, under an agreement that allowed KOTV to continue "cherry-picking" some of the network's stronger programs for broadcast to the entire market, as reception of KCEB's signal was nearly impossible in much of northeastern Oklahoma without an external UHF tuner due to the fact that electronics manufacturers were not required to incorporate UHF tuners into television sets at the time.)

Broadcasting equipment was installed in the Akdar Building studios that allowed the station to televise local films as well as advertising and promotional slides in color.

Another of its most popular shows during this period was Fantastic Theater, a locally produced weekly late-night showcase of classic science fiction and horror films that aired on Friday and Saturday late nights from 1965 to 1968.

Host Josef Peter Hardt – who, as the character Mr. Oktoberfest, gave his hosting delivery in an ominous, authentic German accent (Hardt was born in the German river city of Oberhausen) – typically began each show greeting viewers with "Good evening, meine freunde, and welcome to Fantastic Theater," following a brief philosophical monologue tied to the theme of that week's movie.

[20] On December 1, 1957, KVOO-TV and KVOO radio moved their respective operations into a purpose-built Streamline Moderne art deco facility on 37th Street and Peoria Avenue in midtown Tulsa's Brookside district.

This change was made due to an FCC rule in effect at the time that banned TV and radio stations in the same market, but with different owners from sharing the same call letters.

The KTEW studio facility went without electricity most of the night as Public Service Company of Oklahoma (PSO) crews attempted to restore power to the Brookside district.

[26][27] On July 14, 1980, the station's call letters were changed to KJRH, which were assigned in honor of Jack R. Howard, who served as president of the E. W. Scripps Company and chairman of the Scripps-Howard Broadcasting subsidiary from January 1953 until his retirement from the company in December 1976 (the "-TV" suffix was added to the callsign on February 10, 2010; the KTEW call letters are now used by a Retro Television Network–affiliated low-power station based in Ponca City).

The station changed its branding to "[Channel] 2 Works for You" in January 2001, following the implementation of a new graphics package that placed the current red and white "square 2" logo (which had first been introduced in May 2001 as a time-temperature bug shown during local newscasts, syndicated programming and intermittently during some NBC network shows) into full-time usage.

Streets in the Brookside district near the studio were closed off to allow pedestrian traffic for attendees to the event inspired by the New Year's celebrations at New York City's Times Square.

[35][36][37][38][39][40] On June 25, 2018, Scripps announced it would sell its Tulsa radio properties to Oklahoma City-based Griffin Communications – owner of rival KOTV-DT and CW-affiliated sister KQCW-DT (channel 19) – for $12.5 million.

[41][42][43] Griffin began operating the radio stations under a local marketing agreement on July 30, and completed the purchase on October 2, 2018, separating KJRH and KFAQ for a second time.

Station personnel also gives viewers the option of watching the affected shows on NBC's website and mobile app or its cable/satellite video-on-demand service the day after their initial airing.

From the 1970s to the mid-1990s, it preempted a selected number of NBC late morning daytime shows in order to run syndicated and locally produced programs; this was particularly the case during the early and mid-1990s, when KJRH preempted the vast majority of NBC's late-morning talk shows and soap operas, opting to clear only the afternoon soap operas Days of Our Lives (which aired on the station until the series moved to streaming service Peacock in September 2022) and Another World.

[48][49] In a rare instance of a station preempting a syndicated program, KJRH declined carriage of a March 1990 episode of Donahue discussing the topic of music censorship with a syndicated rerun of the defunct NBC medical drama Quincy M.E., which then-general manager Bill Donahue (no relation to Phil) cited was because the episode contained "numerous vulgarities and crude associations" including strong profanity in the song lyrics featured in a music video from one of the episode's guests, rap group 2 Live Crew (portions of which were already electronically censored for broadcast), that were inappropriate to air in the station's regular 4 p.m. timeslot for Donahue.

In addition to his anchoring duties, Morris became known in the market for his nightly editorial segment, "Commentary," which provided his viewpoint on current events, often reflecting his staunchly conservative views in pertinence on national and world affairs.

Morris left the station after a seven-year tenure in 1979, and subsequently shifted outside of the news industry to become public relations director for aerospace contractor Nordam Group.

The format – which was developed by Cleveland sister station WEWS earlier that year and allowed for stations to provide news headlines to viewers at times when regularly scheduled, long-form newscasts were not being carried – saw KJRH produce 30-second-long news updates near the top of each hour and brief weather updates every half-hour during local commercial break inserts within syndicated and NBC network programs.

)[63][64][65] In October 1990, Tulsa County prosecutors presiding over the DUI/vehicular manslaughter trial of Billy Ray Hinshaw (who killed two Macomb men in a head-on collision in east Tulsa that July) attempted to subpoena KJRH news photographer Mark Whaley to testify about what he saw at the accident scene while filming the story; the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals intervened following an emergency order by Whaley and Scripps Jr. to stay the trial, citing state journalist shield statutes and the need to protect the station's journalistic independence.

[66][67][68][69][70] On October 3, 1993, the station debuted Insight, a weekly public affairs program (originally hosted by weekday morning anchor Darlene Hill) with discussions focusing on prominent people and issues in the Tulsa area's ethnic community.

On April 26, 1991, a KJRH storm chasing unit led by meteorologist Gary Shore observed the touchdown of what became a violent 3⁄4-mile wide (1.2 km), F4 tornado near Red Rock.

[85][86] Shortly after the launch of the 2 News NBC identity in October 1997, KJRH also began to emphasize other local programs alongside its newscasts, moving Webber and Keith from their anchoring roles as a result.

Evening co-anchor Denise Brewer was dismissed around his time, which she cited in a Tulsa World interview occurred after being told by management her contract would not be renewed because she was "too '90s" and "not deferential enough to men on the set".

In February 1999, the station premiered The Weekend Show, a Saturday evening local entertainment news program hosted by Jonathan Dylen that lasted only seven months due to low ratings and frequent NBC Sports event run-ins, while longtime documentary producer Jack Frank – who produced the Tulsa History Series documentaries for OETA and later for KOTV from 1989 to 1997 – began hosting the Oklahoma Memories series of thrice-weekly short films about the state's history told through modern images and historical film clips.

On July 16, the station premiered a half-hour midday newscast at 11 a.m.; originally anchored by the husband-and-wife team of Russ McCaskey and Deborah Lauren McCaskey (who replaced Keith Isbell and Deirdre Davis as anchors of Channel 2 News Today at that time), the program was the first midday newscast to air on the station since it canceled a prior half-hour broadcast at noon in 1996.

As part of the SAFER Act,[114] KJRH kept its analog signal on the air until June 26 to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a loop of public service announcements from the National Association of Broadcasters.