[5][6] A heretofore unnoticed typo in the application assigned the calls KOVB instead of the intended KOTV, for "Oklahoma Television"; this was corrected by the commission in March 1949.

[7] KOTV secured studio space at a former International Harvester dealership in downtown Tulsa in what was, at the time, the largest facility for an American television station.

While the tower was being installed, a workman's wrench fell from atop the building, fatally striking the head of a woman walking underneath the construction site.

However, as manufacturers were not required to include UHF tuners on television sets at the time, NBC struck a backdoor agreement with KOTV that allowed channel 6 to continue "cherry-picking" stronger shows from that network.

Also in 1954, KOTV constructed a 1,135-foot (346 m) transmitter tower at the Osage–Tulsa county line (north of Sand Springs) near Big Heart Mountain, a hill which was named by station president C. Wade Petersmeyer.

[21][22][23][24][25] Whitney (whose namesake owner, philanthropist and investor John Hay "Jock" Whitney, was the brother-in-law of CBS chairman William S. Paley) folded the group – which had expanded to include fellow CBS affiliates KGUL-TV (now Houston-based KHOU) in Galveston, Texas, WISH-TV (now a CW affiliate) and WISH (AM) (now WTLC) in Indianapolis, and WANE-TV and WANE radio (now WIOE) in Fort Wayne, Indiana – into a new subsidiary, the Corinthian Broadcasting Corporation, on April 26, 1957.

The station – which, amid an increase in staffing from 130 employees prior to Belo's sale of the station to around 180 since Griffin took ownership, had been renting a portable building on a lot near the Frankfort Avenue studio to house its advertising sales department, and annexed space in the Pierce Building on Third Street and Detroit Avenue to house KQCW's staff – intended to consolidate the employees of its various departments into a single facility.

[48][49][50][51][52][53][54] The facility incorporates a 5,400-square-foot (502 m2) production studio (which is sound-proofed with multiple layers of sheet rock and insulation in the walls and ceiling, and incorporates upgraded equipment that allowed for KOTV to begin producing its news programming to full high definition); an adjoining 7,000-square-foot (650 m2) newsroom; two control rooms that relay high definition content; and LED lighting equipment throughout the building and an underground system of 32 geothermal heating and cooling wells beneath its parking lot to reduce electricity costs.

KOTV/KQCW's news, sales and marketing departments moved to the new Griffin Communications Media Center – which was dedicated in the names of company founders John T. and Martha Griffin – on January 19, 2013 (commencing broadcasts with that evening's edition of the 5 p.m. newscast), ending KOTV's 63-year tenure at the South Frankfort Avenue facility; all remaining operations were moved into the new facility by January 20.

Because of the station's commitments to run CBS' entertainment and sports programming, KOTV usually aired the telethon on a three-hour tape delay following its 10 p.m. newscast on the Sunday preceding Labor Day, although some CBS sports telecasts—such as coverage of the US Open tennis tournament, which aired on other local stations and local origination cable channels, and from 2011 to 2013, News on 6 Now—was preempted in favor of the telethon.

Eventually, the show was cut down to a five-minute mid-morning program and was retitled Coffee Break, which preempted the Douglas Edwards-anchored CBS Midday Newsbreak.

[71][72] Other noted local programs that have aired on channel 6 include The Uncanny Film Festival and Camp Meeting, a Saturday late-night film showcase and sketch comedy program hosted by Gailard Sartain as Dr. Mazeppa Pompazoidii and local comedian/radio DJ Jim Millaway (using the stage name Sherman Oaks) from 1970 to 1973, and which also featured a then-unknown Gary Busey among its sketch players; Zeta, on Satellite Six, a space-themed children's program showcasing Little Rascals shorts that was hosted by Jim Ruddle (who would later transition into a career in television news that began at KOTV) from 1953 to 1959; and The Woman's Page, a daily talk show hosted by Betty Boyd that ran from 1955 to 1965.

(Independent station KGCT-TV carried the CBS late night block from September 1987 until it temporarily ceased operations in February 1990.

The decision—which was made directly by Belo management due to objections over the video's graphic content—fielded approximately 100 phone calls from viewers, most of which were critical of the move.

[84][85] The station also received criticism for preempting the final round of the PGA Tour's AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am Tournament on February 7, 2000 (which was held on a Monday due to rain delays that suspended play the day prior) in favor of airing its regular daytime lineup of Maury and Oprah, preventing viewers from seeing Tiger Woods' comeback to 15-under-par to win that year's tournament.

The criticism was amplified by the fact that a KOTV telephone receptionist told some viewers calling into the station that satellite transmission issues prevented the tournament round from being broadcast.

Then-KOTV general manager Bud Brown claimed that the station would have lost more than $10,000 in advertising revenue and received "twice or three times as many complaints" had Oprah been preempted that day.

[86] Seven years before Griffin Communications acquired the latter station, KOTV and KWTV in Oklahoma City partnered to simulcast three games involving the state's two Central Hockey League franchises, the Tulsa Oilers and the Oklahoma City Blazers, during the league's 1993–94 regular season; the respective sports directors of both stations at that time, Bill Teegins and John Walls, conducted play-by-play for the broadcasts, with KWTV sports anchor Ed Murray (who would later become a news anchor in 1999, and remain in that role until his retirement from television news in 2013) doing color commentary.

(After leaving KOTV following his recall into the Army to fight in the Korean War in the fall of 1950, Hower would eventually become known among Tulsa-area viewers during his tenure at KTUL from 1970 to 1986, during which he created the Waiting Child segment series – typically read Associated Press and United Press wire copy headlines – with still newspaper photographs being shown while reading some of the featured stories – four times a week.

)[89][90] Clayton Vaughn joined KOTV as an anchor and assignment reporter in 1964, working off-and-on at the station for 33 years (with respective stints in Los Angeles and New York City interrupting his tenure at channel 6 from 1969 to 1971, and again from 1979 to 1981).

In January 1992, Tulsa County District Court Judge Jane Wiseman granted a $4 million judgement to the estate of Joffe – who died from self-inflicted carbon monoxide poisoning in January 1991 – on charges of wrongful discharge, intentional infliction of emotional distress and interference with an employment contract (an additional claim of slander had earlier been dismissed).

He also received numerous awards for his charitable work, having started several community initiatives overseen by the station that help low-income residents, including "Giles' Coats for Kids" (a partnership with The Salvation Army Tulsa Area Command and local dry cleaners to collect donated winter coats and other winter clothing for needy Oklahomans).

The two helicopters are occasionally used by both stations to collaborate on aerial coverage of breaking news and severe weather events in areas where the Oklahoma City and Tulsa markets overlap.

[125][126] The helicopter crashed in a field near William R. Pogue Municipal Airport in Sand Springs on June 20, 2007, while it was making a low-level pass above a station ENG truck on the far west side of the airport's main runway during the filming of a station promo, with the rotors of the chopper clipping a satellite antenna near the truck's front end.

[127][128][129][130][131] The helicopter was replaced on May 5, 2008, incorporating an additional microprocessor-controlled gyro camera on the craft's tail (branded as "SteadiZoom 360"), which allows for showcasing the chopper's side in profile on the left side of the screen, while showing on-scene footage on the right;[132] further upgrades to "SkyNews 6" were made on July 1, 2014, with the installation of a camera capable of shooting high-definition video.

On October 24, 2010, beginning with the 9 p.m. newscast on KQCW, KOTV introduced new on-air graphics designed by Hothaus Creative Design, a new station logo (a rounded red square with a "6" in Goudy type, an upside image of the logo adopted by KWTV) and a new slogan ("Oklahoma's Own"), which – along with "The CBS Enforcer Music Collection" news package by Gari Media Group (which KOTV has used since 2006) – was also adopted by Oklahoma City sister station KWTV on that same date.

[138] On January 19, 2013, KOTV and KQCW became the last two television stations in the Tulsa market to upgrade production of their local newscasts to full high definition.

With the completion of the duopoly's operational migration into the Griffin Communications Media Center on that date, the KOTV-KQCW news department began utilizing an upgraded Avid MediaCentral platform to provide a digitized, collaborative news workflow that eased access to content from Oklahoma City sister station KWTV to transfer, store and edit for inclusion into their newscasts.

[140] For many years, KOTV's newscasts resided at a strong second place (behind KTUL) among viewership totals for the market's local television news operations.

Cox Communications began carrying KOTV's high-definition feed on digital channel 716 throughout its Tulsa service area on December 17, 2004, initially transmitting it daily from noon to midnight.