The two stations share studios on McKinley Avenue in eastern Fresno; KSEE's transmitter is located on Bear Mountain (near Meadow Lakes).

[22][23] When KMJ-TV's broadcast license came up for renewal in November 1974, San Joaquin Communications Corporation (SJCC), a company led by R. W. "Duke" Millard and owned by local investors, filed a competing application to establish a channel 24 station with the FCC.

SJCC contended that McClatchy had "great concentration of control" and was "a monolithic media giant" as a result of its newspaper, radio, and television holdings in Fresno.

[24] The United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division also lodged a petition with the commission asking it to order the breakup of McClatchy's Fresno media holdings due to the dominance of The Bee, the main daily newspaper, and the radio and television stations.

[26] While the FCC accepted a citizens' agreement with the Mexican American group in July 1975,[27] and it dismissed the Justice Department opposition in 1976,[28] the SJCC application continued to simmer as attitudes on cross-ownership of mass media entered the national spotlight.

In response to a federal appeals court ordering divestitures of such combinations, in 1977, McClatchy proposed to trade KOVR for a station in Greenville, South Carolina; SJCC opposed the deal and refused to rescind its petition to deny, contributing to its cancellation after a year in pending status.

Dayle Molen, whose coverage of the hearings appeared in The Bee, noted that for the teams of attorneys from Washington, "Their principal recreation was sampling the cuisine of various Fresno restaurants.

[38] However, an unexpected obstacle formed in November when six different social activist groups filed petitions to deny the transfer, largely because they felt that the station's new owners would not have an adequate editorial policy.

National Land for People, the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, the Mexican-American Political Association, the United Professors of California, the Fresno Democratic Coalition, and El Concilio de Fresno objected to the presence of several large landowners in SJCC's ownership consortium; several of the groups, notably National Land for People, were already contesting these landowners in the Westlands Water District for their use of water.

The investments made by the SJCC principals were rewarded with financial reverses, partly because NBC was the third-rated television network at the time of the acquisition, as well as increased capital requirements.

As a result, when three station groups made unsolicited overtures to purchase KSEE in January 1982, San Joaquin Communications listened and entered into negotiations with the Meredith Corporation to sell channel 24.

[48] It also began a two-year search for a site to relocate and build new studios; in 1985, KSEE announced it would construct a facility near the Fresno Air Terminal.

National and international film was supplied by the Movietone News newsreels and flown in daily; if fog developed in Fresno, footage might be seen days late.

[63] KMJ-TV and KFSN-TV generally traded leadership in news ratings through the late 1970s, but the latter took a dominant lead in the market by the end of the decade thanks to a new anchor pairing.

The station also won a Peabody Award for its 1994 report "The Atomic Bombshell", in which Dale Julin uncovered a radiation hazard resulting from a 1950 military plane crash.

[75][76] In April 2013, prior to the merger of KSEE and KGPE's news departments, the two stations began sharing reporters and photographers, but they continued to maintain separate on-air talent.

[62] The station's signal is multiplexed: The 26.4 subchannel is hosted on KSEE as part of Fresno's ATSC 3.0 (NextGen TV) deployment, launched June 2022, in which Nexstar is a participant.