In June 1953, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted the proposal made by the Cook/Midland venture, and awarded the individual licenses for which the two companies had applied.

After Cook formally assumed ownership of the station on June 14 of that year, KMBC-TV began occupying channel 9 full-time, absorbing WHB-TV's share of the operation and the lease to the Victoria Theatre, wherein Midland had rented space in the lower floors beneath the building's performance stage since it purchased the facility in 1947 to house the operations of KMBC radio and later KMBC-TV.

[7][8][9][10] In January 1955, the Meredith Corporation signed a multi-year agreement with CBS to affiliate three of the four television stations that the company owned at the time with the network.

[13] In the winter of late 1958, Cook Paint and Varnish purchased KDRO-TV (channel 6) in Sedalia; the company subsequently changed that station's call letters to KMOS-TV on January 28, 1959.

In September 1981, Metromedia sold KMBC-TV and the lease to the Lyric Theatre to New York City-based Hearst Broadcasting in a deal worth $79 million for the television station alone.

In 1988, it also built a 343-meter (1,125 ft)-high guyed mast broadcast tower in eastern Kansas City, located on a hill overlooking the Blue River.

The modern purpose-built concrete and glass studio facility incorporates a master control facility with digital and high definition transmission processing equipment; a two-story 4,500-square-foot (420 m2) production studio; an expanded 8,000-square-foot (740 m2) newsroom; a satellite management center supporting downlink and uplink capabilities; a helistop for the station's "NewsChopper 9" helicopter; and surface parking for station employees and guests.

The block—which aired on the subchannel each weeknight from 6 to 11 p.m.—consisted mainly of general entertainment syndicated programs (featuring a selection of same-day or week-delayed rebroadcasts of first-run talk shows seen on KMBC's main channel, as well as shows exclusive to the subchannel); it also included an encore of KMBC-TV's weeknight 6 p.m. newscast, which aired on a half-hour tape delay at 6:30 p.m.[23][24] On June 21, 2011, as part of an affiliation agreement between Hearst Television and network parent Weigel Broadcasting, KMBC-DT2 became an affiliate of the classic television network MeTV; some of the syndicated programs that aired as part of the "MOREtv" block moved to sister station KCWE with the switch.

[26] (As a result, World News Tonight was only viewable in the Kansas City market on Monday through Saturday evenings, except when preempted by predetermined or unscheduled sporting event overruns.)

In these and other instances, viewers within the Kansas City market could view the affected shows in their normal time slots if they received KQTV (channel 2) out of nearby St. Joseph, which became a full-time ABC affiliate in September 1967, and/or KTKA-TV out of Topeka, which signed on in February 1983.

Under Metromedia ownership, channel 9 declined to air The Brady Bunch when it debuted in September 1969, in favor of running movies in its time period, which effectively preempted most of ABC's Friday night lineup; the station resumed clearance of the sitcom the following year.

[27] Beginning with the newsmagazine's debut in 1980, KMBC-TV delayed Nightline to midnight—90 minutes later than most ABC stations had carried it at the time, with the only instances in which Channel 9 carried the program in its network-designated time slot being for major breaking news events—in order to run off-network syndicated sitcoms in the time period following its 10 p.m. newscast, something KMBC continued to do even after many Big Three affiliates in large and mid-sized markets began restricting their off-network syndicated content to drama series scheduled to air on weekends; this decision had long been criticized by some members of ABC's management and even original Nightline anchor Ted Koppel.

KMBC was also among the more than 20 ABC-affiliated stations owned by Hearst and various other broadcasting groups that declined to air the network's November 2004 telecast of Saving Private Ryan, because of concerns that the intense war violence and strong profanity that ABC opted against editing out of its broadcast of the 1998 World War II-set film would result in stations that aired it being fined by the FCC amid the agency's crackdown on indecent material following the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy.

[31][32] The station, along with several other Hearst-owned ABC affiliates, chose to air the 1992 film Far and Away in its place; it was eventually determined that the movie's broadcast did not violate FCC regulations.

[31][33] Since 1970, KMBC-TV has carried NFL games involving the Kansas City Chiefs through either ABC's simulcast of Monday Night Football or team-specific syndication arrangements with ESPN.

Presently, the station reschedules ABC's Monday night schedule to air in place of the network's late night lineup to accommodate the game, with Dancing with the Stars (which ABC moved to Mondays in September 2006) airing after the late newscast on the affected live performance episode's original airdate, incorporating a separate voting window for Kansas City-area viewers under a clause in the program's voting regulations that account for preemptions by ABC stations for MNF telecasts involving local NFL franchises, or extended breaking news or severe weather coverage in Dancing's normal timeslot.

Hearst Communications holds a 20% ownership stake in ESPN (the remaining majority interest and operational control of the network is maintained by ABC parent The Walt Disney Company, with Hearst acting more as a silent partner rather than an active participant in ESPN's management); as is the case with ABC's owned-and-operated stations, Hearst's television stations hold the right of first refusal for NFL game simulcasts from ESPN, which—as the telecasts are cable-originated—are required under NFL broadcasting rules to be simulcast on a broadcast television station in the local markets of both participating teams.

However, the station faced stiff competition during this period from KCTV, which ascended to first in late news with the success of main anchors Anne Peterson and Wendall Anschutz.

Moore helmed KMBC's weekday evening newscasts in some capacity for 37 of his 41 years at KMBC-TV—with a four-year break from 1978 to 1983, while Moore took short-lived anchor jobs at ABC owned-and-operated station WLS-TV in Chicago and, later, CBS affiliate KPIX-TV in San Francisco—until his retirement from regular broadcasting on November 27, 2013, when he transitioned into an anchor emeritus role in which he contributed to special projects reports.

She then filed a lawsuit against its then-owner Metromedia, accusing KMBC-TV management of both fraud and sexual discrimination, becoming one of the first such cases to be widely publicized in the United States.

On November 13, 2008, Channel 9 again became the focus of a lawsuit filed against the station, parent company Hearst-Argyle Television and Wayne Godsey, then-general manager of KMBC/KCWE, by anchor/reporters Maria Antonia (named as a plaintiff under her legal name, Maria Albisu-Twyman) and Kelly Eckerman, and general assignment reporter/former evening anchor Peggy Breit, alleging that station management engaged in age and gender discrimination, perpetrated "a hostile environment, permeated with threats, intimidation and disrespect" and demoted them in favor of younger women, while men much older than them stayed in their assigned anchor slots.

[41][42] Godsey was dismissed from the lawsuit in July 2009, on procedural grounds citing the plaintiffs' failure to name him in the complaint involving twelve other KMBC employees that was originally filed with the Missouri Human Rights Commission did not put him on notice that he was being held personally responsible for the work environment alleged in the suit; KMBC and Hearst-Argyle reached a settlement with the three anchors in September 2010.

KMBC's ABC-affiliated sister stations under Hearst including WMUR-TV in Manchester, New Hampshire; WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh; WCVB-TV in Boston; KOCO-TV in Oklahoma City and KETV in Omaha also transmit high definition programming content—including local and syndicated programs—in this format.

[56] The station shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 9, on June 12 of that year, the official date on which full-power television stations in the United States were federally mandated to transition from analog to digital broadcasts (which was originally scheduled for February 17, but was pushed back after both Congressional branches passed measures to delay the complete conversion to ensure that all consumers receiving television broadcasts over-the-air had the equipment necessary to receive digital transmissions).