The two stations share studios on Delgany Street in Denver's River North Art District; KMGH-TV's transmitter is located atop Lookout Mountain, near Golden.

In 1954, Gaylord sold the KLZ television and radio stations to Time Inc.,[3] who later subordinated their acquisition under its in 1961 established subsidiary Time-Life, Inc. as Time–Life Broadcasting, Inc.

WFBM-TV (channel 6, now WRTV) in Indianapolis, KERO-TV in Bakersfield, and KOGO-TV (channel 10, now KGTV) in San Diego were retained by McGraw-Hill, along with KLZ-TV, which subsequently changed its call letters to KMGH-TV on the 1st (with the calls reflecting the new ownership), in order to comply with a now-repealed FCC rule in place then that forbade TV and radio stations in the same market, but with different ownership from sharing the same callsigns.

[12] The FCC approved the sale on November 29, 2011, and the deal was officially completed on December 30, 2011, resulting in McGraw-Hill's exit from broadcasting after 39 years.

[13] The deal marked a re-entry into the Denver market for Scripps; prior to its acquisition of KMGH, the company had owned the Rocky Mountain News from 1926 until the afternoon newspaper ceased publishing in 2009.

In July 2024, KMGH left its longtime home at The Communications Center on Speer Boulevard for a state-of-the-art facility located near Coors Field.

In 1957, the station's weekly public affairs series Panorama Seven (which was written and hosted by Gene Amole), became the first locally produced program in the Denver market to earn a Peabody Award (channel 7 has since won three more Peabody Awards for the investigative report "Honor and Betrayal: Scandal at the Air Force Academy" in 2003, reported by John Ferrugia and produced by Kurt Silver and current news director Jeff Harris,[16] 2008's "Failing the Children: Deadly Mistakes", reported by Ferrugia and produced by Tom Burke and Arthur Kane,[17] and 2012's "Investigating the Fire"[18]) Starting in 1968 and running through 1983, KLZ-TV aired one of the most popular children's programs in the Denver market, the Noell and Andy Show, which aired weekdays at 8 a.m.

Unlike many ABC affiliates which preempted the network's presentation of Saving Private Ryan, KMGH, along with the other McGraw-Hill stations, aired the film in 2004.

As a CBS affiliate, the station aired the Denver Broncos' appearances on KMGH-TV, in Super Bowls XII, XXI and XXIV.

Unlike most stations affiliated with ABC or its competitors, KMGH did not broadcast a local newscast in the 6 p.m. timeslot on weeknights for eight years, opting to fill the hour with episodes of Jeopardy!

While KLZ-TV always had a strong line-up of local and syndicated programs during the station's early years, it was obviously helped by CBS's longtime dominance nationally.

From December 1994 to August 1997, the station operated a weather radar system known as "Doppler Max7", that was heavily promoted during the failed tabloid-formatted "Real Life, Real News" era; this period (from 1996 to 1997) emphasized hard news and investigative reports, but was unable to beat KUSA and KCNC, the former of which had overtaken KMGH for first and the latter for second in most timeslots in the ratings by this point.

Ten studio cameras, channels of audio, all art graphics and electronic titling along with tape operations are programmed and played back live by one person instead of seven people.

[22] KMGH-TV is the only Denver television station to have won two Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Awards: the first for the 2003 report, "Honor and Betrayal: Scandal at the Air Force Academy" and the second for the 2010 investigative documentary "33 Minutes to 34 Right".

On June 28, 2013, KMGH entered into a partnership with The Denver Post to collaborate on investigative reports and weather coverage as well as providing additional Spanish-language news content.