The channel 14 allocation in Oklahoma City was first assigned to KLPR-TV, which operated from May 31, 1966, to December 1967, as an independent station.
KTBO-TV first signed on the air on March 6, 1981, broadcasting from the former studios of KOCO-TV (channel 5) on Northwest 63rd Street.
In September 1989, KTBO engaged in a campaign encouraging viewers to call local cable providers Cox Communications (which served Oklahoma City proper) and Multimedia Cablevision (which served most of the city's suburbs before its Oklahoma systems were acquired by Cox in 1999) and tell them to protest premium cable channel Cinemax's broadcast of Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, which had garnered controversy among the religious community a year before for its depiction of Jesus Christ in an alternate reality after being tempted by what he later discovers to be Satan in the form of a beautiful child (particularly for depicting Christ imagining himself engaged in sexual activities).
[2][3] On October 27, 2020, KTBO's 1,175-foot (358 m) transmission tower, as well as a radio transmitter owned and operated by TBN, collapsed due to significant freezing rain accumulation created by a severe early-season ice storm that crippled much of Central Oklahoma; ice accumulations on the tower contributing to the collapse were observed to be around 3 inches (76 mm).
[4][5][6] In January 2021, KTBO resumed over-the-air transmission of its TBN programming under a temporary leasing agreement with The Edge Spectrum, Inc., relayed in standard definition over the second digital subchannel of KUOT-CD (channel 21).