KUSM and KUHM are licensed to MSU, KUFM to UM, and KBGS, KUGF and KUKL to The Board of Regents of the Montana University System.

In 1983, several Gallatin Valley residents led by Nancy Fikkema formed Montanans for Children's Television (MCT) to press for a PBS station in the area.

Depending on the location, cable systems in western Montana piped in KSPS-TV in Spokane or KRMA-TV in Denver, while cable systems in eastern and central Montana piped in Prairie Public Television from North Dakota or KUED in Salt Lake City.

With this in mind, MCT published a survey in the Bozeman Chronicle asking if at least 2,000 people were willing to contribute $2 per month for a local public television station.

Station engineers switched to and from KUED's signal for most PBS programming until 1987, giving MSU time to train its staff and build local financial support.

On July 1, 2015, Gray Television announced that it would donate the license assets of Helena CW affiliate KMTF to Montana State University for integration into the Montana PBS system as its sixth full-power station (the station's CW Plus programming will continue to be carried on a subchannel of NBC affiliate KTVH, which Gray sold to Cordillera Communications in correlation to the deal).

[2] The station, re-called KUHM-TV, will improve reception in areas around Helena unable to receive that city's local translator, K49EH-D.

In 2018, it acquired the five translators led by KSKC-CD (now K27MS-D), the public television station of Salish Kootenai College, and incorporated them into the network.

The station's digital channel allocations post-transition are as follows:[10] Montana PBS is available free-to-air on AMC 21 (125°W) Ku-band satellite television.