KTEN's history traces back to 1952, when Eastern Oklahoma Television Inc.—a locally based company owned by Bill Hoover, C. C. Morris and Brown Morris, who also owned radio stations KADA (1230 AM) in Ada and KWSH (1260 AM) in Wewoka through their Oklahoma Broadcasting Company subsidiary[2]—applied with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a license to operate a television station on VHF channel 12 (the 1952 assignment of the frequency to the Sherman–Ada media market under the Sixth Report and Order consequently resulted in the FCC also moving the channel 12 allocation originally assigned to Waco, Texas westward to Abilene—where it would become occupied by present-day ABC affiliate KTXS-TV—to avoid interference with any Sherman–Ada station that would be assigned to that channel).

Hoover's firm purchased a plot of land located 10 miles (16 km) north of Ada with the intention to build a studio and transmitter facility for the station, for which it originally filed to use KEO as its call letters.

[3][4] The station first signed on the air on June 1, 1954, as the first television station to sign on in the Ada–Sherman market,[3] Originally based out of studio facilities located on Arlington Street in Ada (which continues to serve as its city of license to this day), channel 10 originally maintained a primary affiliation with ABC, with programming from NBC airing on a secondary basis; this was very unusual for a two-station market, especially a small DMA the size of Sherman–Ada.

Among KTEN's earliest personalities was Churches of Christ televangelist Mack Lyon, who began his television career with channel 10 as a producer and speaker for a religious program which aired on the station.

[7] Channel 10 would eventually gain a competitor when a consortium led by Maurine Easley and Albert Riesen, the daughter and son-in-law of John Easley, longtime owner of The Ardmoreite and radio station KVSO (1240 AM), signed on KVSO-TV (channel 12, now KXII) in Ardmore on August 12, 1956; KVSO assumed the local rights to NBC programming from KTEN, and also served as a secondary CBS affiliate.

[3] By the time KXII disaffiliated from the network to exclusively align with CBS in 1977, KTEN began carrying a larger proportion of NBC programming within its schedule.

Although KTEN and KXII had theoretically been direct competitors for many years, the 50-mile (80 km) difference between their respective transmitter sites created disproportionate over-the-air reception of the two stations.

Johnston planned to take over as the station's general manager, based out of a satellite office in Durant; FCC approval of the sale, however, was held up for three years and did not occur until November 16, 1988.

By this time, KTEN was gravitating toward becoming a primary NBC affiliate, but continued to carry a large proportion of ABC's schedule; the station even incorporated localized versions of promotional image campaigns produced by both networks.

[10] Because the Sherman–Ada market did not have enough commercial television stations to sustain an exclusive affiliation, Texoma area residents could only watch Fox network programming via the network's cable feed, Foxnet, or through out-of-market affiliates—KOKH-TV in Oklahoma City, KJTL in Wichita Falls or Fox owned-and-operated station KDAF [now a CW affiliate] in Dallas–Fort Worth—that provided a Grade B over-the-air signal in certain areas or were available on local cable providers.

With the station becoming more financially stable under Lockwood, KTEN disaffiliated from ABC and Fox in September of that year, resulting in the station exclusively aligning with NBC; at that point, it began carrying the vast majority of the network's programming schedule, although it continued to preempt the network's daytime talk programs until the end of the decade, although it delayed that block to the early morning by that time.

[13][14][15] Repairs to and replacement of the damaged production equipment were completed by April 1, at which point the station resumed over-the-air transmissions of all three channels at full power.

[21][22][23] After KTEN terminated its affiliation contract with ABC in September 1998, because the market did not have enough commercial television stations to support exclusive affiliations with all four major broadcast networks, viewers in the Ada–Sherman television market were only able to receive ABC programming through local cable providers, by way of out-of-market affiliates such as WFAA in Dallas–Fort Worth and KOCO-TV in Oklahoma City (the ABC station that was available on the local cable provider varied depending on the subscriber's geographic location within the market: WFAA, which maintains marginal to absent over-the-air coverage, even with amplified outdoor antennas, north of a line from Muenster to Whitewright, Texas, was mainly carried in far south-central Oklahoma and north-central Texas from Ardmore southward, while KOCO was carried in most of south-central Oklahoma's northernmost counties from Ada southward to Ardmore).

Lockwood helped finance the infrastructure needed for KTEN's ABC subchannel (including costs to construct an extension to the High Point Circle facility that would house a secondary studio for KTEN-DT3's newscasts) through a grant from the Denison Development Alliance, a local chamber organization that advocates for business development in the Denison area, along with investments made by Lockwood management.

KTEN-DT3 clears the entire ABC network schedule, although it airs the Weekend Adventure block and This Week one hour earlier than their respective recommended time slots on both Saturdays and Sundays (transmitting them live under the network's Eastern Time Zone scheduling for both the Saturday morning E/I block and Sunday morning talk show).

Channel 10 may also simulcast long-form severe weather coverage on KTEN-DT3 in the event that a tornado warning is issued for any county in its viewing area of south-central Oklahoma and far north-central Texas.

In the mid-1980s, KTEN took advantage of newly implemented FCC rules that permitted translator stations to provide localized content for their individual area of service.

At the time the station opened the Merrick Drive facility in Ardmore in 1985, KTEN used the facility primarily to operate a bureau to gather news content for Carter County and surrounding areas on the Oklahoma side of the market; the station hired two full-time reporters and photographers from the Ardmore Energy Center (KTEN also maintains a satellite sales office within the building).

Prior to becoming the station's main studio complex by the early 1990s, the Katy Depot facility in Denison initially also served as a bureau for Grayson County and surrounding areas of north-central Texas, also maintaining two reporters and a photographer as well as a satellite sales office.

The program—which was the first local prime time news program to debut in the Ada–Sherman market – uses the same anchor staff as that employed for the evening newscasts on KTEN's main channel.

On September 12, 2011, KTEN launched an hour-long newscast at 4 p.m. for KTEN-DT3 (the program was originally slated to air on the station's main signal, before being moved to the ABC subchannel shortly before its debut).

[38] As part of the SAFER Act, KTEN kept its analog signal on the air until June 30 to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a loop of public service announcements from the National Association of Broadcasters.