On July 25, 1958, while it was in the midst of protracted hearings regarding the predecessor station's bankruptcy, the Republic Television and Radio Company (owner of the allocation's original occupant, ABC affiliate KTVQ, which operated from November 1, 1953, until it was forced off the air by court order on December 15, 1955) donated the construction permit and license to Independent School District No.

Although the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reserved the UHF channel 25 allocation in Oklahoma City for commercial broadcasting purposes, the school district proposed upon acquiring the permit to operate it as a non-commercial educational independent station.

The station originally operated from studio facilities based out of the district's Broadcasting Center at the former Classen High School building on North Ellison Avenue and Northwest 17th Street in Oklahoma City's Mesta Park neighborhood (later occupied by the Classen School of Advanced Studies until the district consolidated it with Northeast Academy at that school's campus on Northeast 30th Street and Kelley Avenue in August 2019), which also served as a production facility for National Educational Television affiliate KETA-TV (channel 13, now a PBS member station), which the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority (OETA) signed on as Oklahoma's first educational television station on April 13, 1956.

[4] Channel 25's programming—which originally ran Monday through Fridays for seven hours per day, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.—consisted mainly of instructional and lecture-based telecourse programs developed or acquired in cooperation with the Oklahoma State Department of Education, which offered the course subjects attributable for college credit.

In the fall of 1978, Oklahoma City Public Schools declared its intent to sell KOKH-TV, intending to redirect the money it funneled into the television station to raise teacher salaries.

In Oklahoma City Public Schools' favor was the fact that it had never formally requested that the UHF channel 25 allocation—which had officially been reserved by the FCC for commercial use—be reclassified to non-commercial status upon acquiring the permit from Republic Television and Radio.

[13] KOKH gained a competitor four weeks later on October 28, when Seraphim Media signed on the similarly formatted KGMC-TV (channel 34, now CW-affiliated sister station KOCB).

This was followed by the launch of KAUT (channel 43) by Golden West Broadcasters on October 15, 1980, which initially featured programming from subscription service Video Entertainment Unlimited (VEU) at night as well as on weekend afternoons.

(Three weeks later on November 3, KAUT added a rolling news format as well as a limited schedule of syndicated entertainment programs during the daytime hours on weekdays.)

[14] Because of its status as the strongest of Oklahoma City market's three commercial independents, in the spring of 1986, KOKH was approached by News Corporation to become a charter affiliate of the fledgling Fox Broadcasting Company.

[17][18] On November 5, in a corporate restructuring to focus on expanding its Spanish language network NetSpan (now Telemundo) and to pay off debt incurred by the Reliance purchase, Blair and Co. sold KOKH, and NBC affiliates KSBW-TV in Salinas and KSBY in San Luis Obispo, California, to Nashville-based Gillett Communications for $86 million; the sale received FCC approval on December 30, and was finalized on December 31.

The National Black Media Coalition filed a petition asking for the FCC to deny the transaction, contending that OETA was not qualified to acquire KGMC (which had been the center of an investigation into disgraced stock trader Ivan Boesky's improper transference of his majority share of the station's parent company to his wife) under an FCC policy allowing stations facing revocation of their licenses to be sold to a group led by women or minorities at 75% of their market value.

After the KGMC proposal was voted down by OETA's board of directors that September, Seraphim Media chose to sell KGMC to Cleveland, Ohio–based Maddox Broadcasting Corp.—which would have refocused that station to primarily refocus a mix of religious and Home Shopping Network (HSN) programming—for $3.6 million, including $2.6 million in intellectual assets (such as transmitter facilities, studio equipment and licenses) that would not be acquired by Pappas.

However, it gradually became less reliant on movies during this period, as the growing cable television industry began to impact the ability of broadcast stations to acquire film content.

Taking on Heritage's broadcast operations would have put News Corporation over the defined 35% national market reach for an individual television station owner of that time.

Through a series of sales made to address antitrust concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice's San Francisco field office over the deal, on August 7, 1997, Sinclair sold channel 25 to Sullivan Broadcast Holdings for $60 million.

Although it voted to approve the Sullivan purchase, the FCC issued a $40,000 fine against Sinclair on grounds it controlled Glencairn in violation of the agency's local ownership rules.

[74][75] However, as noted in a 2003 ruling on the matter by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the issue involving KOKH was rendered somewhat moot, as on August 5, 1999, the FCC began allowing broadcasters the ability to form duopolies between television stations, provided that eight independent owners remain in a market once a duopoly is formed and one of the properties does not rank among the market's four highest-rated stations.

[80] KOKH and KOCB served as the flagship stations for the Oklahoma Lottery beginning with the inaugural evening drawings of its Pick 3 and Cash 5 games on November 10, 2005.

Among those anchoring the updates were Ronnie Kaye (a former radio DJ at WKY [930 AM], who was hired by KOKH in August 1980 to serve as the station's Director of Information Services), Mike Monday (later known for being the pitchman for now-defunct local furniture/electronics store Sight and Sound), Karie Ross, Felicia Ferguson (winner of the 1985 Miss Oklahoma pageant), Janis Walkingstick and Kelly Ogle (now an evening anchor at KWTV).

From the time of the Newstouch relaunch until 1988, the station also produced Weathertouch 25, two-minute-long weather updates that aired on the half-hour during the broadcast day; the segments—featuring weathercasters such as Ross Dixon (former KOCO and eventual OETA meteorologist), Dan Satterfield, and Kevin Foreman (later a meteorologist at KFOR-TV)—utilized the first colorized radar scan converter and satellite picture colorizer in Oklahoma, as well as live radar data from the National Weather Service Terminal Doppler at Will Rogers World Airport.

In addition, KOKH produced several public affairs and interview programs including Meet The Mayor (an interview program featuring discussions and viewer questions with the Mayor of Oklahoma City), Woman to Woman (which featured discussions about women's issues) and Sunday PM (a weekly talk show focusing on prominent people, issues and events in Oklahoma City).

Reams affirmed this position in a June 1994 interview with The Daily Oklahoman, stating that KOKH would not offer a regular newscast under his oversight, even with the likelihood that its ratings and revenue would increase once Fox took over the National Football Conference television contract that fall.

(Bowen and McIntyre had earlier co-hosted Ground Zero, a half-hour special—which aired on KOKH on February 27, 1996, four months before the newscast launched—that showed previously restricted footage recorded by first responders during the Murrah Building bombing's aftermath.

Brad Wheelis and Colleen O'Quinn were hired to co-anchor the Friday and Saturday editions at that time (the two resigned in 2000 after failing to reach contract renewal terms).

[98] Turnover in the news department was so significant that in 2000, the station temporarily used solo anchors for the weekday and weekend newscasts, while Bell conducted the weather segment seven nights a week.

Formatted as a mix of local and national news, weather updates and lifestyle features, it was initially anchored by Brent Weber (who would later serve as a sideline reporter for Oklahoma City Thunder game telecasts on Fox Sports Oklahoma) and Angie Mock, alongside meteorologist Jeff George (who was shifted to evenings, subsequently being promoted to his as of 2019[update] as chief meteorologist, in February 2010) and feature reporter Lauren Richardson.

The program was the first second local morning newscast in the market to run after 7 a.m., debuting ten years after KWTV's News 9 This Morning—which discontinued its 7 a.m. hour in January 2008 to comply with CBS's request that its affiliates clear The Early Show in its entirety—had expanded into the slot.

On December 11, simulcasts of the weekday 5–7 a.m., 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. newscasts replaced Tulsa-originated broadcasts in those timeslots on KTUL, with those programs being reformatted to feature news coverage centered around the Oklahoma City and Tulsa markets.

As part of the SAFER Act,[114] KOKH kept its analog signal on the air until March 3 to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a loop of public service announcements from the National Association of Broadcasters.