It is owned and operated by the Ion Media subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company, and maintains offices on Blairs Ferry Road Northeast in Cedar Rapids and a transmitter near Walker, Iowa.
The station first signed on the air on May 3, 1997, as KTVC; it was originally an affiliate of the Infomall TV Network (inTV), a service operated by Paxson Communications that specialized in paid programming.
On August 31, 1998, KPXR became a charter station of the family-oriented Pax TV network (later reformatted into a general entertainment service as i: Independent Television, now Ion Television), with religious programming from The Worship Network airing during the overnight hours.
On September 24, 2020, the Cincinnati-based E. W. Scripps Company announced it would purchase KPXR-TV's owner, Ion Media, for $2.65 billion, with financing from Berkshire Hathaway.
[2] Part of the deal included divesting 23 stations nationally to Inyo Broadcast Holdings (then-undisclosed at the time of the announcement) that would maintain Ion affiliations.