It was briefly an NBC network affiliate until another Seattle station signed on; the next year, KMO radio and television were sold to separate owners.

The Seattle broadcaster J. Elroy McCaw bought channel 13, changed the call sign to KTVW, and ran it as an independent station.

During Kelly's 19-year ownership of KCPQ, the station became a Fox affiliate, relocated its studios from Lakewood to Seattle, and established its present local news department.

[7] The FCC indicated the necessity of a hearing to approve the sale due to the then-impermissible overlap of the Seattle and Tacoma radio stations' coverage areas;[8] the deal was then scrapped several weeks later.

[11] With KMO-TV separated from KMO radio, the television station changed its call sign to KTVW in October 1954[9] and announced plans to open auxiliary offices in Seattle.

[27] These shows, along with most of channel 13's local programming, were temporarily suspended at the end of March 1970 as part of cutbacks it attributed to "the economic slowdown".

[29] The business news programming briefly left the air that April before closing for good at the end of October 1970 along with the Northern Life Tower studio in Seattle.

[30] In early 1969, plans were floated to convert KTVW to color, move the transmitter to Port Orchard, and relocate the studios to Seattle.

This talk/entertainment show was hosted by Tony Visco, a Las Vegas lounge entertainer and singer, attempted to recreate a Tonight Show-style program.

[40] After two months on-air, rising production costs forced Blaidon to relocate the program from a Tacoma restaurant to the station's studios; channel 13 canceled The Tony Visco Show before the year ended.

After they were paid by cashier's check, channel 13 resumed operations the next day, but employees remained skeptical of Blaidon's financial condition.

[46] By the end of January, Blaidon had pleaded with the FCC to expedite approval of the CBN transfer; Wolfstone expected the Internal Revenue Service to lock up his Seattle office for failing to pay withholding taxes in the second half of 1973.

[48] In July, MCA Television, among KTVW's largest creditors, successfully petitioned for the appointment of a receiver to manage the station's affairs.

[49] Despite a brief improvement in financial position when the receiver separated KTVW from Blaidon,[50] the CBN sale fell apart over its refusal to assume all of the television station's liabilities.

[51] In 1976, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Blaidon, alleging that they had sold stock to non-Washington residents without SEC approval and issued misleading financial reports to prospective investors in the company.

[54] When the bankruptcy court revealed the identity of the winning bidder for channel 13's transmission site—the studio equipment having been sold at a sheriff's sale—the local television community was shocked to learn that the buyer would be the Clover Park School District.

It was more cost-effective to replace the channel 56 physical plant with KTVW, a high-power VHF station that could reach more western Washington homes and schools.

[61] The call letters were changed to KCPQ-TV and the license modified to noncommercial before channel 13 returned to the air on January 4, 1976; the microwave link was not ready, so KPEC-TV remained in service until it was.

[63] Programming in the Clover Park era, which included PBS material, represented a continuation of KPEC-TV's former service and originated from its existing Lakewood studios.

The transmitter upgrade also attracted a high-profile name: Jim Harriott, who had been the highest-paid anchor in local TV news at KING-TV and who took a pay cut to come to channel 13 and helm public affairs programming.

[68] In late 1978, the Clover Park School District received a $6 million offer from two investors from Tucson, Arizona: Gene Adelstein and Edward Berger, owners of that city's independent KZAZ-TV.

[67] After the approval of a settlement between this group and Kelly that included a $450,000 gift (equivalent to $1.4 million in 2023[6]) from the buyer for public television and the donation of the Ruston tower to KTPS,[72] KCPQ ceased educational broadcasting on February 29, 1980, and the station went silent for a major technical overhaul.

[73] While KCPQ would continue to use Clover Park's studio space, the transmitter was relocated to Gold Mountain, a peak located west of Bremerton, where the station erected a new tower; this enabled channel 13 to increase its signal footprint across western Washington.

[83] In February 1990, KCPQ signed a three-year deal with Buena Vista Television to carry The Disney Afternoon, spurning Fox's own children's lineup which launched that fall.

In 1995, Kelly Broadcasting bought a former candy factory on Westlake Avenue along Lake Union in Seattle which would be renovated and expanded[88] to house KCPQ's operations.

Even though Bob Kelly lived in Tacoma, the company made the decision to move out of the South Sound and into a space more than twice the size of the prior studio and closer to the bulk of market activity.

[89] On September 13, 1997, KCPQ moved its studios to the new, $30 million[90] Seattle facility, retaining only a small sales office in the city of license of Tacoma.

[105] In September 2014, the New York Post reported that Fox was planning to acquire KCPQ from Tribune in exchange for its Chicago MyNetworkTV station WPWR-TV—which would have created a duopoly with WGN-TV in that city.

As a potential stopgap, KCPQ considered airing a 10 p.m. newscast from KIRO-TV, which at that time was preparing to switch back from UPN to CBS and was shopping the 10 p.m. hour to other local stations.

[149] The station produces a local program on law enforcement and crime news, The Spotlight with David Rose, which airs every Friday at 11:00 p.m.