The station is owned and operated by the Ion Media subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company, and has offices on Price Avenue in Redwood City; its transmitter is located atop San Bruno Mountain.
The station first signed on the air on November 15, 1986, as KLXV-TV (the last three letters of the callsign representing the Roman numeral for 65) and was an affiliate of the Trinity Broadcasting Network.
KKPX became a charter owned-and-operated station of Pax TV (the predecessor of Ion Television, to which the network was renamed in 2007) on August 31.
The newscasts were originally branded as NewsChannel 11 on Pax after KNTV switched its affiliation from ABC to The WB.
The station's signal is multiplexed: KKPX-TV had plans for a Mobile DTV feed of subchannel 65.1.