KOKI would gain a competitor on March 18, 1981, when a joint venture between Green Country Associates and Satellite Syndicated Systems signed on fellow independent KGCT-TV (channel 41, now MyNetworkTV affiliate KMYT-TV) with a mix of syndicated entertainment programs, locally produced news and talk programming in the afternoon, and movies, sports and specials from the In-Home Theatre (IT) subscription service at night.

In 1988, the station moved its operations into a low-rise office building on East 54th Street and South Yale Avenue (near LaFortune Park) in southeast Tulsa, which was named Fox Plaza.

After trying for several years to offload KOKI-TV, the Tulsa 23 partnership secured a willing buyer on March 6, 1989, when it reached an agreement to sell the station to San Antonio, Texas–based Clear Channel Television for $6.075 million.

Citing that KOKI had not generated a profit for some time as a result of an economic downturn spurred by an oil exploration slump in the region during the 1980s, division parent Clear Channel Communications (now iHeartMedia)—which had owned KMOD-FM and KAKC (1300 AM) since the company, as San Antonio Broadcasting Corp., acquired the two radio stations from Unicorn Inc. in 1973—applied for a "failing station" waiver of FCC ownership rules that then prohibited common ownership of television and radio stations in the same market on the basis that the combined ownership would provide KOKI with needed financial support to remain operational and expand its public affairs programming.

[11][12][13][14][15][16] (KOKI would gain additional radio sisters when Clear Channel purchased KQLL-AM-FM [1430, now KTBZ, and 106.1, now KTGX] and KOAS [92.1 FM, now KTBT] from Federated Media for $15.4 million in April 1996; as the Telecommunications Act eliminated the radio-television cross-ownership restrictions, the company acquired the two stations without amending the earlier waiver.

[18] On November 3, 1993, Clear Channel Television entered into a local marketing agreement with RDS Broadcasting – which had relaunched channel 41 (as independent station KTFO) in May 1991, after completing its purchase of the dormant license—to provide programming, advertising and other administrative services for KTFO, which would subsequently move that station's operations from its existing studio facilities on Garnett Avenue in southeast Tulsa into the Fox Plaza facility.

The sale was approved by the FCC on March 9, 2000; following consummation of the transaction that May, KOKI and KTFO became the first legal broadcast television duopoly in the Tulsa market.

[23][24] In January 2002, Clear Channel relocated the operations of KOKI and KTFO from Fox Plaza into a 124,000-square-foot (11,500 m2) studio complex located at 2625 South Memorial Drive.

[27][28][29][30] The sale was approved by the FCC on December 1, 2007; after settling a lawsuit by Clear Channel ownership to force the equity firm to complete the sale, the Providence acquisition was finalized on March 14, 2008, at which time it formed Newport Television as a holding company to own and manage 27 of Clear Channel's 35 television stations (including KOKI and KMYT), and began transferring the remaining nine stations (all in markets where conflicts with FCC ownership rules precluded a legal duopoly from continuing under Newport) to High Plains Broadcasting, a licensee corporation formed to allow those stations to remain operationally tied to their associated Newport-owned outlets through local marketing agreements.

[31][32][33][34][35] On August 11, 2011, William Sturdivant II—a then-25-year-old with a history of mental health issues, including once reportedly being apprehended on such an event after walking 250 miles (400 km) from Tulsa to Dallas, and an arrest record that included charges for burglary and drug possession – was found wandering in an area outside the KOKI/KMYT/Clear Channel Radio facility on Memorial Drive that was not authorized for public access, where he was chased onto the building's roof by security guards and climbed up to the 150-foot (46 m) mark of an adjacent 287-foot (87 m) transmission tower owned by Clear Channel for use by its radio stations and as an auxiliary tower for KOKI.

[49][50][51][52] Although the sale separated KOKI/KMYT from its former radio sisters under Clear Channel ownership, iHeartMedia's Tulsa cluster continued to operate out of the Memorial Drive facility until the summer of 2017, when Cox moved its Tulsa-area radio stations into the building and iHeart moved its local stations into a new facility on Yale Avenue and 71st Street (northeast of Oral Roberts University) in southeast Tulsa's Richmond Hills section.

[56] On March 29, 2022, Cox Media Group announced it would sell KOKI-TV, KMYT-TV and 16 other stations to Imagicomm Communications, an affiliate of the parent company of the INSP cable channel, for $488 million;[57] the sale was completed on August 1.

The preempted programs may either be diverted to KMYT-TV on a live-to-air basis (resulting in the lower-priority MyNetworkTV schedule being run on tape delay during the late-access or overnight hours) or rebroadcast over KOKI in place of regularly scheduled late-night programs, although station personnel also gives viewers the option of watching them on Fox's proprietary streaming platforms (including its website, mobile app or the Tubi streaming service), Hulu, or its cable/satellite video-on-demand service the day after their initial airing.

Channel 23 formerly served as the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA)'s "Love Network" station for the Tulsa market, carrying the charity's annual telethon on Labor Day and the preceding Sunday night each September from 2000 to 2010.

(Most Cowboys preseason games not televised by Fox or by other broadcast or cable networks are carried over-the-air locally on CW affiliate KQCW [channel 19] through that station's agreement with the team's syndication service.)

From 1989 to 1992, KOKI carried regular season and postseason college basketball games involving teams from the Big Eight Conference (distributed by Raycom Sports) and the Missouri Valley Conference (distributed by Creative Sports Marketing), which gave the station rights to select regular season games featuring the Oklahoma Sooners, the Oklahoma State Cowboys and the Tulsa Golden Hurricane.

Most college basketball telecasts aired on the station on Saturday afternoons, although it also occasionally carried prime time games on weeknights, specifically during the Big Eight and Missouri Valley men's tournaments.

[64] From 2005 to 2010, channel 23 also served as the official local broadcaster of OSU-produced analysis and magazine programs, including the weekly shows of the respective head coaches of the Cowboys' basketball, baseball and football teams.

As Fox was urging many of its stations to begin producing their own newscasts around this time, in a May 1994 Tulsa World interview, then-general manager Hal Capron responded when asked whether KOKI might develop a news department that while the enormous cost of starting such an operation was an issue, it would format the newscast as a cutting-edge broadcast to differentiate itself from competitors KJRH, KOTV and KTUL if it went forward with such plans.

The 9 p.m. newscast – which has aired as an hour-long program since its premiere broadcast, which itself was delayed due to an hour-long episode of Malcolm in the Middle that followed Fox's telecast of Super Bowl XXXVI – was originally anchored by Chera Kimiko (who, prior to joining channel 23, served as weekend morning anchor at KVBC [now KSNV] in Las Vegas from 1999 to 2001) and Darren Dedo (who served as weekday morning anchor at WJTV in Jackson, Mississippi from 2000 to 2001), chief meteorologist Jon Slater (who had worked at KSHB-TV in Kansas City from 1999 to 2001, and had previous stints in Tulsa at KJRH and KTUL earlier in the 1990s) and sports director Vic Faust (who had served in that same position at KMIZ-TV in Columbia, Missouri from 1998 to 2001).

)[80] From the outset, the station maintained a commitment to consumer investigative reporting, with a focus on helping northeastern Oklahoma residents that have been scammed by local businesses as well as government issues.

Acting as a local alternative to national network newscasts aired on KJRH, KOTV and KTUL in that timeslot, it featured a mix of general and financial news in a faster-paced format targeted at viewers arriving home from their afternoon commute, along with full weather and abbreviated sports segments (with the sports segment initially consisting of a live cut-in featuring Faust sitting in with KTBZ afternoon drive radio hosts Rick Couri and Don King).

Formatted as a mix of local and national news, weather and traffic updates and lifestyle features, it was initially co-anchored by Ron Terrell (who originally joined KOKI in June 2004, after a four-year tenure at KOCO-TV in Oklahoma City, to succeed Faust as part of overhaul of the sports department that also saw the departures of Briggs and sports reporter/videographer Justin Holgate; Terrell remains anchor of the newscast as of 2019[update]) and Ann Sterling (who served as one of the original anchors of the weekday morning newscast at KNXV-TV in Phoenix, and had previously worked as an evening anchor at fellow Fox affiliate and now-former sister station WXXA-TV in Albany).

It was the second local newscast in the market to run after 7 a.m., debuting twelve years after KOTV's Six in the Morning (the 8 a.m. hour of which moved to KQCW in January 2008) had expanded into the slot.

)[94][95][86] On January 16, 2011, starting with the 90 p.m. newscast, KOKI became the second television station in the Tulsa market (behind KJRH-TV) to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition, with studio segments and field video footage recorded and broadcast in true HD; with the change, the station adopted the logo, music (OSI Music's "Fox Affiliate News Theme") and graphic scheme (a modified version of the Hothaus Creative Design package originally commissioned for fellow Fox affiliate KSWB-TV in San Diego) that was based on the standardized branding of Fox's owned-and-operated stations.

The 2000 comedy-drama film Where the Heart Is, which was set in northeastern Oklahoma, featured a fictional depiction of KOKI incorporating live trucks and microphones with flags bearing the station's logo in a scene in which lead character Novalee Nation (Natalie Portman) is interviewed by a channel 23 reporter after giving birth inside a Sequoyah-area Wal-Mart where she was abandoned by her baby's father, Willy Jack Pickens (Dylan Bruno).