The non-commercial UHF channel 47 allocation was contested between two groups that vied to hold the construction permit to build a new station on the frequency.

[4] Following a March 1980 hearing in which the FCC determined issues regarding the respective licensing proposals, the Hargis group (which by that time, had transferred the permit application to another of his organizations, Church of Christian Crusade, Inc. [CCC]) was granted the permit that winter, despite issues that Alden had raised against CCC in part over possible rule violations in its attempts to discourage public file inspections.

[7][8][9] In October 1983, Church of the Christian Crusade sold an 85% interest in the permit to Oral Roberts University (ORU) for 85% of FCC-approved expenditures totaling $255,000; the FCC granted approval of the transaction on January 12, 1984.

[10][11][12] However, ORU would later back out of the transaction that spring, at which time CCC was granted its next set of calls for the channel 47 permit, KDLF-TV (after the organization's radio station in Port Neches, Texas, now KBPO).

Coit Drapery and Cleaners opted to put KTCT up for sale there, and wanted to sell the station to a Christian religious broadcast ministry.

[15][16] After the acquisition was finalized in the fall of 1986, LeSEA changed the station's call letters to KWHB (standing for "World Harvest Broadcasting").

After KGCT began a two-year operational cessation in February 1989, in order to allow original owner Green Country Associates to weigh sale offers for the station, KWHB acquired a selection of cartoon shorts and animated series that channel 41 previously carried on its schedule.

As time went on, KWHB carried a broad mix of various syndicated programs including classic and some recent sitcoms (such as The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, Mister Ed, The Little Rascals, Dennis The Menace (both the live-action sitcom and the animated series), The Brady Bunch, I Love Lucy, The Andy Griffith Show and The Cosby Show), westerns (such as Bonanza), and animated series (such as The Jetsons, Yogi's Gang and DuckTales); it also carried a mixture of movies and sporting events on weekends.

While this cut off access to the KWHB-preempted WB programs carried on the superstation feed to TCI's approximately 170,000 subscribers in the Tulsa area, it remained available locally on Heartland Cable Television, DirecTV, Dish Network and PrimeStar.

WGN was particularly vulnerable to removal as it had lost access to much of the Chicago Bulls' 1996–97 game schedule due to a dispute between its Tulsa-based distributor, United Video Satellite Group (co-founded by Ed Taylor and Roy Bliss, founders of local TCI predecessor Tulsa Cable Television), and the National Basketball Association (NBA) over WGN's carriage of the team's telecasts outside of the Chicago market (TCI did not include its Oklahoma systems among those that retained the WGN national feed per an agreement reached with United Video that December, which kept the channel available on TCI in five Midwestern states).

)[28] In August 1998, LeSEA Broadcasting and KWHB were fined up to $12,000 by the Federal Communications Commission for exceeded Children's Television Act advertising limits (which restrict programming time allocated to commercials to 12 minutes per hour on weekdays and 10½ minutes per hour on weekends) during children's programs that aired on the station a total of 47 times between July 13, 1996, and December 1, 1997.

On May 4, 1999, transmission lines at KWHB's Coweta transmitter facility were knocked out due to intense lightning related to severe thunderstorms associated with a storm system that produced 66 tornadoes across the central third of Oklahoma on May 3.

On that date, TCI regained access to the station at its northeastern Oklahoma headends after repairs to the direct fiber optic studio feed were completed.

On October 22, 2019, Family Broadcasting Corporation announced it would sell KWHB to Clearwater, Florida–based Christian Television Corp. (owned and headed by Robert D'Andrea) for $2.1 million.

[42] From 1988 to 1998, channel 47 carried regular season and postseason college basketball and football games involving various local and regional teams including the Tulsa Golden Hurricane (through Creative Sports/ESPN Plus's contract with the Missouri Valley Conference and, then with Tulsa's member conference after 1996, the Western Athletic Conference, along with several 2005 regular season games that KWHB produced in conjunction with College Sports Television), the Oral Roberts Golden Eagles and the Oklahoma Sooners, as well as select NCAA tournament appearances involving at least some of those teams distributed via syndication partners of those teams or through CBS (for network-televised games conflicting with those carried on KOTV [channel 6]).

[51][52][53] In April 2001, KWHB obtained the broadcast rights to carry AF2 games involving the Tulsa Talons, beginning with the arena football league's 2001 season.

Talons co-owner Henry Primeaux cited KWHB's telecasts of the entire 16-game regular season in 2005 in part for helping increasing ticket sales by 14% and raising attendance by 8.3% (an average of 44,722, up from 41,292 in 2004) over the previous year.