These satellite operations provide additional news bureaus for KOB and sell advertising time to local sponsors.

KOBF has repeated KOB since 1983, when Hubbard acquired it from the last of several owners of KIVA-TV, a small local station that was also an NBC affiliate.

The transmitter tower was built on the bluffs south of town, and KIVA-TV, an NBC affiliate,[7] began broadcasting on the afternoon of October 20, 1972.

[11] A group of five Houston investors led by John Catsis acquired KIVA-TV in 1976[12] and closed on the deal in January 1977; they promised to add a local news department to the station with two full-time reporters.

It came from KOB-TV, which was anxious to improve its circulation statewide and challenge KOAT-TV for first place in the New Mexico television news ratings.

Hubbard Broadcasting reached a deal to buy the Roswell station and then offered $3.6 million for KIVA-TV, which Adams accepted within eight minutes.

[19] It promised to infuse as much money as needed to turn the station around technically and in its local productions; ground was broken in November 1983 on a new studio facility at Lake and Broadway streets.

[20] Bettie Sue Cleveland, appointed general manager by Hubbard, became the first woman to hold that post at a New Mexico television station; she died in 1990.