KPCC itself is primarily serving Greater Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley; through rebroadcating and translator stations, KPCC's programming also reaches the Santa Barbara, Coachella Valley, Palm Springs, and Ventura County, California areas, and part of the Inland Empire area.

[6]: 71  It used the former KWKW-FM 250-watt transmitter and studio equipment, and a small antenna on the roof of the campus administration building that provided limited coverage.

[6]: 71  The original callsign of KPCS stood for "Pasadena City Schools",[6]: 96  but in the meantime the institution operating KPCS had been renamed to Pasedena City College had afterward split into a separate community college district;[citation needed] so the callsign was changed to KPCC at the end of 1971.

[6]: 92 Formerly, the station broadcast from a transmitter in Orange County, later from Downtown Los Angeles (at the Frank Stanton Studios), and on the PCC campus.

[citation needed] KPCC's transmitter and radio tower moved from the C Building at PCC to a higher-powered facility on Mount Wilson in 1988.

[6]: 115  However, by the end of the 1990s, KPCC remained a small, student-operated National Public Radio station with various music programs and a budget of $300,000.

PCC gets on air recognition and funding for a broadcast internship program (along with the traditional responsibility of maintaining FCC-related issues as the licensee), while APM controls the station and all the pledges, grants, and corporate underwriting revenues.

[10] In March 2010, KPCC moved from the Shatford Library to a 35,000-square-foot (3,300 m2) converted office building on Raymond Avenue in Pasadena, at a cost of $24.5 million, and named the new facilities the Mohn Broadcast Center and Crawford Family Forum.

[8] In February 2018, SCPR, along with the operators of public radio stations WNYC in New York City and WAMU in Washington, D.C., acquired much of the assets of the blog Gothamist and its sister sites LAist and DCist, using donations from two anonymous donors, and with plans to merge LAist into SCPR's existing studio operations.