The station is owned by Gray Media and maintains studios on West 2nd Street in Downtown Ottumwa; its transmitter is located one mile (1.6 km) east of Richland, Iowa.

Its first stint on the air was short-lived, as its founding majority owner, Impact Television, was undercapitalized and ran out of money, forcing it to shut all of its stations down that August.

After a sale, the station returned to the air in June 1987 and became a Fox affiliate in 1988, changing its call sign to KYOU-TV in 1992.

Impact owned KOIA and low-power stations in Jackson, Tennessee; Jonesboro, Arkansas; and Oglesby, Illinois.

[4][12] Ottumwa Television Limited Partnership sold the station in the wake of the shutdown to Public Interest Broadcast Group Inc., an Orlando, Florida-based firm owned by Dean C. Engstrom and Les White, for $900.

[20] For most of KOIA-TV/KYOU-TV's history since returning to the air in 1987, the station had been the local broadcaster of Iowa Hawkeyes sports events, even well into its Fox affiliation.

Ottumwa Media Holdings then entered into a local marketing agreement (LMA) with Raycom, owner of KTVO, to provide KYOU-TV with commercial scheduling, promotions, master control, and production services (including a planned local newscast), though programming and sales remained separate.

[30][31] This followed a failed effort by New Moon Communications to convert KUMK-LP—a former TBN translator—to an NBC affiliate in 2011;[32] KUMK-LP's license was canceled in March 2014.

[34] On June 25, 2018, Atlanta-based Gray Television announced an agreement with Raycom to merge their respective broadcasting assets in a $3.6 billion cash-and-stock transaction.

[35][36] As part of the merger, Gray also acquired KYOU and WUPV in Richmond, Virginia, which Raycom exercised its options to purchase outright from American Spirit Media.