OETA's main offices and production facilities are located at the intersection of Kelley Avenue and Britton Road in northeastern Oklahoma City, adjacent to the former studios of KWTV-DT and KSBI.

[1] In a unanimous vote, the Oklahoma Legislature subsequently approved House Concurrent Resolution #5, which urged the FCC to reserve broadcast television frequencies for non-commercial use.

[2][3][4] After appointing its members, in August 1953, the OETA Board of Directors held its first meeting and began the process of forming a statewide public television network.

[3][4][7] After securing a broadcast license from the FCC, $540,000 in legislative appropriations, and private funding from various special interest groups (led by a $150,000 donation by Daily Oklahoman publisher Edward K. Gaylord and the donation of $13,000 worth of broadcasting equipment from RCA), KETA (which added the TV to its callsign on January 31, 1983) in Oklahoma City—which would become the network's flagship—was finally able to sign on the air over channel 13 on April 13, 1956; it was the first educational television station to sign on in Oklahoma, the second in the Southwestern United States (after KUHT in Houston, which launched in May 1953 as the nation's first public television station) and the 20th non-commercial television station to sign on within the United States.

During its first fourteen years of operation, KETA – and later, KOED – maintained a 20-hour weekly schedule of instruction programming, broadcasting only on Monday through Friday afternoons (from 1:30 to 4 p.m.) from August through May; much of the station's programming in its early years consisted of video telecourse lectures televised in cooperation with the Oklahoma State Department of Education, which offered course subjects attributable for college credit.

In seeking a waiver of FCC rules requiring advertisements to be deleted when an educational television outlet carries a sponsored program, ABC noted that it was denied "effective competitive access" in Oklahoma City, due to the fact that KWTV and NBC affiliate WKY-TV (channel 4) were the only stations operating in the market at that time and already had primary network allegiances.

By early July, the OETA had withdrawn KETA from the waiver petition, resulting in the FCC choosing unanimously to refuse to "entertain" an ABC-only request to waive the rules.

The authority petitioned to move KOED's allocation to that reserved by local commercial station KJRH-TV [channel 2] in July 1981, but was ultimately denied permission to take over the frequency.

[7][3][17] In 1970, KETA and KOED became member stations of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), which was launched as an independent entity to supersede and assume many of the functions of the predecessor NET network.

Allen—who would also serve on the Board of Directors of PBS and other national public television organizations during his tenure at the member network—initiated many efforts to help grow OETA into his vision as a network that would distribute educational and cultural programs throughout Oklahoma's 77 counties.

OETA moved its main Oklahoma City operations in 1974, when it opened a new studio and office facility next to KETA's Kelley Avenue transmitter site, which was constructed through funds appropriated by the legislature and allowed the member network to begin producing locally originated programming.

[7][3][23] OETA launched its fourth and final full-power station on August 6, 1978, when KWET (channel 12) in Cheyenne signed on as a satellite of KETA, serving west-central and portions of northwestern and southwestern Oklahoma, and the far eastern Texas Panhandle.

)[3][24][25] OETA also began building a network of low-power UHF translators (each operating at 1,000 watts) to service parts of the state that were unable to receive the four full-power VHF stations.

[4] By the time the translator network was completed in 1981, with the sign-on of six repeaters in Alva, Ardmore, Duncan, Frederick, Lawton and Ponca City,[4] OETA extended its coverage to nearly the entire state.

As of 2017[update], OETA's full-power stations make up the vast majority of its overall coverage, reaching roughly 80 percent of Oklahoma's geographic population.

Over-the-air service to KETA and its translators in north-central and southern Oklahoma was restored later that week, after KWTV allowed its fellow tower tenant to use their backup cable until repairs could be conducted.

[27][28] After the Oklahoma State Contingency Review Board rejected the authority's request for emergency funds for the transmission cable replacement, on July 21, Allen initiated his own fundraising effort: it included distributing funding solicitation mailers that were delivered to 34,000 private and public donors who contributed to the "Festival '83" pledge drive that March (who were asked to contribute pledges averaging $6.40 per person), and a stunt conducted by Allen himself, in which he climbed onto the tower to seek donations from the public.

[7] In 1990, OETA premiered Wordscape, a 16-part nationally syndicated instructional series for children in Grades 4 through 6, providing grammar instruction through two to five word cells per 15-minute episode, which were tied to a common theme; the Heartland Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded the program a 1991 Heartland Emmy Award for Outstanding Youth/Children's Program.

[47][48] As the OETA's state budget appropriation shrank, KTLC began altering its program format to save money, even though most of the channel's funding initially came from private sources.

In July 1993, weekday and weekend morning schedules were axed, initially temporarily, in response to a 17.9-percent budget cut that left the Literacy Channel with no state funding source.

[59][60][a] Paramount agreed to air The Literacy Channel programming in late-mornings, provide OETA with airtime for promotions, cover some costs for digital equipment installation, and simulcast one fundraising drive per year, all over a five-year period.

[66] As early as 2000, OETA sought a newer facility for their existing Tulsa studios, which suffered from limited space, aged equipment, and other infrastructure issues.

These cuts led to the cancellation of Oklahoma Forum and Stateline, and reductions in State Capitol bureau staff; in 2010, OETA employed 68 staffers, well below the 84 employees it was authorized.

[72] In May 2023, Governor Kevin Stitt vetoed a measure to provide state funding to OETA for three years, accusing the network of "indoctrinating" and "overly sexualizing" children, including broadcasting pro-LGBT content in both local and national programming.

[77][79] The Foundation also accused OETA of negligence when hiring Polly Anderson as executive director after her dismissal from WUCF-TV in Orlando, Florida, over allegations of misconduct and insubordination.

Board chairman Garrett King accused the Foundation of interfering with daily operations, denying OETA personnel access to portions of the headquarters, and making repeated attempts to hack into the network's computer system.