Fiktiv USA - KOTV-TV

KOTV-DT, virtual channel 6 (UHF digital channel 26), is a CBS-affiliated television station licensed to Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States. The station is owned by Griffin Communications, as part of a duopoly with Muskogee-licensed CW affiliate KQCW-DT (channel 19); it is also sister to radio stations KFAQ (1170 AM), KBEZ (92.9 FM), KVOO-FM (98.5), KXBL (99.5 FM) and KHTT (106.9 FM). All of the outlets share studios at the Griffin Communications Media Center on North Boston Avenue and East Cameron Street in the downtown neighborhood's Tulsa Arts District; KOTV's transmitter is located on South 273rd East Avenue (just north of the Muskogee Turnpike) in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. On cable, the station is available on Cox Communications channel 6 in both standard and high definition.

On March 24, 1948, the Cameron Television Corporation (originally doing business as George E. Cameron Inc.) submitted an application to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a construction permit to build and license to operate a broadcast television station in Tulsa that would transmit on VHF channel 6. The company was owned by George E. Cameron Jr., a Texas-born independent oil producer, broadcasting executive Maria Helen Alvarez and John B. Hill, a salesman for a Tulsa oil field supplier (both Hill, who would serve as KOTV's original sales manager, and Alvarez owned 15% stakes in the company).

The formation of the partnership traces to when Alvarez – at the time, an employee of the Tulsa Broadcasting Company, then owner of local radio station KTUL (1430 AM, now KTBZ) – conducted a study authorized by John Toole "J.T." Griffin, majority owner and president of Tulsa Broadcasting and Muskogee-based wholesale food distributor Griffin Grocery Company, and his sister, Marjory Griffin Leake, into whether a television venture in Tulsa could be successful. After two years of research, Alvarez suggested to the Griffins that they file a television license application as quickly as possible. The Griffin siblings ultimately decided that such a venture would be too risky at that point and planned to wait a year before going to the FCC to apply, only to have those plans stalled by an agency-imposed freeze on television station license applications instituted by the FCC in September 1948. (The Griffins and James C. "Jimmy" Leake, husband of Marjory and brother-in-law of J.T., would eventually venture into television when their Oklahoma Television Corporation signed on CBS affiliate KWTV in Oklahoma City in December 1953; J.T. Griffin would launch his second television property in September 1954, when Tulsa Broadcasting signed on Muskogee-based ABC affiliate KTVX [channel 8, now KTUL, which would relocate to Tulsa in September 1957].) Alvarez subsequently resigned from Tulsa Broadcasting and began casting about for investors who would be willing to get a station on the air right away. At a social event, she was introduced to Cameron, who was looking to spend monthly royalty checks he had saved, totaling $50,000, on a business venture.

The FCC granted the construction permit for channel 6 to the Cameron-Alvarez-Hill group on June 2, 1948, as no other applications had been submitted for agency review. However, the group soon discovered that they would need to re-file the request, as a previously unnoticed typo in the application had assigned KOVB as the call letters for the new station, rather than the calls that Cameron had requested, KOTV (for "Oklahoma Television"). The FCC would approved the change to the KOTV calls in March 1949. While this was happening, Alvarez negotiated a leasing agreement to utilize an International Harvester dealership and repair shop at West Third Street and South Frankfort Avenue in downtown Tulsa to serve as KOTV's studio building, and converted it into what became the largest television studio facility in the United States at the time (a second floor was added to the existing 7,800-square-foot [720 m2] facility in the fall of 1954). The station's 1,328-foot (405 m) transmitter antenna and dish, which was built in the backyard of chief engineer George Jacobs, was eventually hoisted to the top of the National Bank of Tulsa Building on East 3rd Street and South Boston Avenue. Alvarez had spent a year convincing National Bank of Tulsa officers that the tower would be safe and, in time, become a local landmark. While the tower was being installed, a workman's wrench fell from atop the building, fatally striking the head of a woman who was passing below the construction site. Detractors of the station – who took to calling the accident, "Cameron's Folly" – jumped on the story, proclaiming it as a sign that KOTV was "jinxed" from the start. A local radio executive who spoke at a Tulsa Chamber of Commerce luncheon said that anyone investing in KOTV or buying a television set was "foolish"; Cameron Television continued on, however, with Alvarez (who served as president of Cameron Television and general manager of KOTV) handling all aspects of the station's development, while Cameron himself primarily focused on supervising his many oil properties in California. Alvarez and her company co-partners invested nearly $500,000 into developing the station; in an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch shortly before the station signed on, she made the bold statement that KOTV would be operating in the "black" within six months of its sign-on, a comment dismissed by many of its detractors. Alvarez also visited 42 of the 89 existing television stations already in operation throughout the United States to study the intricacies of running a television station.

KOTV first began test transmissions on October 15, 1949; the pattern signal was seen by a handful of viewers among the 3,500 northeastern Oklahoma residents that owned television receivers, carrying as far away as Enid and Eufaula, Oklahoma, Monett, Missouri and Fayetteville, Arkansas. The station started regular broadcasts on October 22. It was the first television station to sign on in the Tulsa market, the second to sign on in the state of Oklahoma (after WKY-TV [now KFOR-TV] in Oklahoma City, which debuted five months earlier on June 6) and the 90th to sign on in the United States. More than one month later, on November 23, KOTV broadcast its first locally produced program: a live meeting by the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce at the Tulsa Club (on East 5th Street and South Cincinnati Avenue), which was attended by many of the station's original critics. One week later, on November 30, the station commenced regular broadcasts at 7:00 p.m. with a "Special Dedication Program" that featured guests such as Oklahoma governor Roy J. Turner; Tulsa mayor Roy Lundy; singer Patti Page; Leon McAuliffe and his western swing band; and Miss Oklahoma Louise O'Brien. The next day on December 1, KOTV broadcast a two-hour sampling of the top programs from all five networks of the time from which the station carried programming during its first few years. Over 3,000 television sets were placed throughout the city for public viewing, some of them set on sidewalks outside of appliance stores. After several days of this sampling, the public began to buy their own television sets and KOTV began to cement a small, but growing, viewing audience in the Four State Area.

Originally broadcasting for 11½ hours per day from 12:30 p.m. to midnight seven days a week, the station has been a primary CBS television affiliate since it signed on. Channel 6 initially also maintained secondary affiliations with NBC, the DuMont Television Network and the Paramount Television Network at its launch; KOTV would add a fifth affiliation on November 15, when it began carrying a limited selection of ABC network programs. Along with network shows, in its early years, one-third of the station's schedule was devoted to locally produced programs. Even though KOTV's relations with all of the commercial broadcast networks were smooth, the station showed a preference for CBS's program offerings over the others. At first, network programming was aired about one week after their initial live broadcast on the East Coast; it would not be until 1952, before the installation of a microwave link with New York City made reception of live network programming possible. Three hours of programming were filled by varied network content during the evening hours.

On May 12, 1952, Cameron and Hill sold a controlling 85% interest in KOTV to another Texas oil magnate, Jack D. Wrather Jr., and his mother, Maizie Wrather, for $2.5 million (a purchase price far exceeding the amount it cost to build the station). Wrather knew little about television, and persuaded Alvarez – who retained 15% of the station's shares – to stay on as general manager (a role she had held since KOTV signed on, and a groundbreaking one in broadcasting, as she became the first female to work as a general manager of a television station). Wrather also made her a full partner in a new joint venture entity that became known as Wrather-Alvarez Inc. (later renamed the General Television Corporation in January 1954). The sale received FCC approval on July 31. By 1954, the station expanded its daily schedule to 17 hours per day from 7:00 a.m. to midnight.

Because of the aforementioned freeze on license application grants, KOTV was the only television station in the Tulsa market until 1954. That March, KOTV gained its first competitor when UHF station KCEB (channel 23, channel now occupied by Fox affiliate KOKI-TV) signed on as a primary NBC and secondary DuMont affiliate. However, as manufacturers were not required to include UHF tuners on television sets at the time, NBC struck a backdoor agreement with KOTV that allowed channel 6 to continue "cherry-picking" stronger shows from that network. In April 1954, KOTV installed color transmission equipment, in a byproduct of an agreement with NBC to carry network programs produced in the format; the station would air its first network color broadcast, the children's program Ding Dong School, one month later on May 21. A few months later on December 5, KVOO-TV (channel 2, now KJRH-TV) signed on and took the remaining NBC programs that KOTV carried. In preparation of losing NBC programming, KCEB had switched to a primary ABC affiliation in July of that year, with that network agreeing to affiliate with channel 23 on the condition that KOTV be allowed to cherry-pick its shows as well. KTVX took all of the remaining ABC programs when that station debuted on September 18, 1954, which left KOTV with an exclusive CBS affiliation and KCEB (which, like many early UHF television stations, would cease operations in December of that year as a result of losing its affiliations with NBC and ABC) saddled with fourth-ranked DuMont. Also in 1954, KOTV constructed a 1,135-foot (346 m) transmitter tower at the Osage–Tulsa county line (north of Sand Springs) near Big Heart Mountain, a hill which was named by station president C. Wade Petersmeyer. KOTV management subsequently reached an agreement with the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority (OETA) to lease space on the tower – which became the fifth tallest structure in the world at the time of its completion that October – for the transmitter of proposed educational station KOED (channel 11), which would eventually sign on January 12, 1959. The new transmission facility also came with an increase in its transmitter power from 16.5 kW to 100 kW, expanding KOTV's signal coverage to a 24,000-square-mile (15,000,000-acre) area. In 1956, KOTV began carrying select programs from the NTA Film Network.

In April 1954, General Television sold KOTV to Indianapolis-based venture capital firm J.H. Whitney & Company for $4 million. The transaction involved a two-phase transfer in which KOTV was reassigned from General Television directly to Alvarez, Wrather and the latter's mother, Maizie Wrather, all of whom would then transfer their interests to Whitney-owned licensee Osage Broadcasting Corp. The transfer received FCC approval on May 14, with KOTV becoming Whitney's first broadcasting property. Whitney (whose namesake owner, philanthropist and investor John Hay "Jock" Whitney, was the brother-in-law of CBS chairman William S. Paley) folded the group – which had expanded to include fellow CBS affiliates KGUL-TV (now Houston-based KHOU) in Galveston, Texas, WISH-TV (now a CW affiliate) and WISH-AM (now WTLC) in Indianapolis, and WANE-TV and WANE radio (now WIOE) in Fort Wayne, Indiana – into a new subsidiary, the Corinthian Broadcasting Corporation, on April 26, 1957.

In 1958, KOTV became the first television station in Oklahoma to install videotape equipment for the production and broadcast of programming. The following year, in 1959, KOTV upgraded its equipment to broadcast local film shows in color; the later began broadcasting its local programming in color in December 1966. On December 3, 1969, Corinthian Broadcasting – which had its ownership transferred directly to J.H. Whitney from his company's Whitney Communications Corporation unit two years earlier – announced it had reached an agreement to be acquired by private equity firm Dun & Bradstreet for $137 million in stock. Following a 16-month-long regulatory review process that included a deadlocked 3-3 tie vote when the agency first considered the sale's approval in November 1970, the purchase received FCC approval on April 14, 1971, and was finalized the following month on May 27. In 1974, KOTV maintained an affiliation with the TVS Television Network, carrying the network's World Football League game telecasts in place of CBS's Thursday night lineup.

On June 19, 1983, the Dallas, Texas-based A. H. Belo Corporation acquired the six Corinthian Television properties (with WISH-TV and WANE-TV subsequently being spun off to LIN Broadcasting) from Dun and Bradstreet for $606 million; KOTV's purchase price was $41 million. The sale – which was considered to be the largest group purchase by a single broadcasting company up to that time, surpassing the price of the Gannett Company's $370-million purchase of Combined Communications Corporation in 1979 – received FCC approval on November 22, 1983, and was finalized in late January 1984. In 1984, KOTV and KJRH formed a consortium to have a new 1,825 feet (556 m)-tall tower constructed between Broken Arrow and Oneta, which was completed in 1985. Additional transmitters were subsequently installed to serve as auxiliary facilities for KOED and religious independent station KWHB (channel 47).

On October 18, 2000, Belo announced that it would sell KOTV to Oklahoma City-based Griffin Communications (now run by the descendants of John T. Griffin) for $82 million. Under Griffin ownership, the company intended to pool resources and content between the news operations of KOTV and Oklahoma City flagship station KWTV; the purchase also made KOTV a sister station to NBC affiliate KPOM-TV (now Fox affiliate KFTA-TV) and satellite station KFAA (now KNWA-TV) in the adjacent Fort Smith–Fayetteville, Arkansas market (Griffin Communications would sell the latter two stations to the Nexstar Broadcasting Group in 2004, in order to focus on its broadcast properties in Oklahoma City and Tulsa). The purchase was finalized on January 3, 2001, returning the station to Oklahoma-based ownership after 38 years. On May 1, 2001, Griffin launched a Tulsa area feed of its cable news joint venture with Cox Communications, News Now 53, offering live and repeat newscasts from KOTV (maintaining the same rolling news format that had been in place when the channel launched on Cox's Oklahoma City system with news content from KWTV in December 1996). Griffin Communications acquired Cox's interest in News Now 53 on April 1, 2011, converting it into a broadcast-originated service via subchannels of KOTV and KWTV under the respective brands News on 6 Now and News 9 Now. Griffin invested $10 million to purchase production control and master control equipment to accommodate high-definition and digital broadcasts as well as upgrades to its digital transmitter.

On October 8, 2005, Griffin Communications purchased Muskogee-licensed WB affiliate KWBT (channel 19, now CW affiliate KQCW-DT) from Spokane, Washington-based Cascade Broadcasting Group for $33.5 million ($26.8 million for the non-license assets and $6.7 million for the license itself). Under the terms of the deal, Griffin assumed responsibility for KWBT's advertising sales and administrative operations under a local marketing agreement that continued until the sale's closure. When the deal was finalized on September 29, 2005, KOTV and KWBT became the fourth commercial television station duopoly in the Tulsa market, after Fox affiliate KOKI-TV and then-UPN affiliate KTFO (channel 41, now MyNetworkTV affiliate KMYT-TV), which had been jointly operated through a local marketing agreement since 1993 and became commonly owned when Clear Channel Communications purchased channel 41 outright in 2001. KWBT subsequently migrated its operations from its studio facility in Yukon, into KOTV's Frankfort Avenue studios on December 6 of that year.

On October 25, 2007, Griffin announced that it would construct a 50,000-square-foot (4,645 m2) media center on North Boston Avenue and East Cameron Street in downtown Tulsa's Brady Arts District (renamed the Tulsa Arts District in September 2017) that would house KOTV, KQCW and Griffin New Media, which manages the websites operated by Griffin Communications. The station – which, amid an increase in staffing from 130 employees prior to Belo's sale of the station to around 180 since Griffin took ownership, had been renting a portable building on a lot near the Frankfort Avenue studio to house its advertising sales department, and annexed space in the Pierce Building on Third Street and Detroit Avenue to house KQCW's staff – intended to consolidate the employees of its various departments into a single facility. Groundbreaking on the site took place on April 8, 2008, with an original targeted completion date for sometime in the summer of 2009. However, construction on the $11.8-million facility was delayed in the midst of the global recession; construction formally commenced in October 2011, and was completed in early November 2012. The facility incorporates a 5,400-square-foot (502 m2) production studio (which is sound-proofed with multiple layers of sheet rock and insulation in the walls and ceiling, and incorporates upgraded equipment that allowed for KOTV to begin producing its news programming to full high definition); an adjoining 7,000-square-foot (650 m2) newsroom; two control rooms that relay high definition content; and LED lighting equipment throughout the building and an underground system of 32 geothermal heating and cooling wells beneath its parking lot to reduce electricity costs. KOTV/KQCW's news, sales and marketing departments moved to the new Griffin Communications Media Center – which was dedicated in the names of company founders John T. and Martha Griffin – on January 19, 2013 (commencing broadcasts with that evening's edition of the 5:00 p.m. newscast), ending KOTV's 63-year tenure at the South Frankfort Avenue facility; all remaining operations were moved into the new facility by January 20. Some archival material in the former building (including news footage, specials and still photographs dating to the 1950s) was donated to the Oklahoma Historical Society.

On June 25, 2018, the E. W. Scripps Company announced it would sell its Tulsa-area radio properties – KFAQ (1170 AM), KVOO-FM (98.5), KBEZ (92.9 FM), Muskogee-licensed KHTT (106.9 FM) and Henryetta-licensed KXBL-FM (99.5) – to Griffin Communications for $12.5 million. The purchase marks Griffin's entry into radio station ownership, even though the company has owned the Radio Oklahoma Network syndicated news service since 2005; it also puts KOTV in the unusual position of being co-owned with KFAQ, a station which – through its then-ownership by the Southwestern Sales Corporation – founded rival KJRH (as KVOO-TV) in December 1954. Griffin began operating the radio stations under a local marketing agreement on July 30, and completed the purchase on October 2, 2018.

KOTV-DT currently broadcasts the entire CBS network schedule, albeit with variances for certain programs that place them outside of their network-recommended scheduling (as detailed in the section below). However, it may preempt some CBS programs in order to air long-form breaking news or severe weather coverage, or occasional specials produced by the KOTV news department, which may either be diverted to KQCW, or, less commonly, rebroadcast on tape delay over KOTV's main channel in place of regular overnight programs. Station personnel also gives viewers the option of watching the affected shows on CBS' website and mobile app, Paramount+ or its cable/satellite video-on-demand service the day after their initial airing. Syndicated programs broadcast by KOTV as of September 2019 include Dr. Phil, Whacked Out Sports, Extra and Entertainment Tonight.

As a result of the expansion of its local morning newscast into a two-hour broadcast in September 1993, KOTV has aired CBS's morning news-talk programs—CBS This Morning (both the 1987–99 and 2012–present versions) and The Early Show (from 1999 to 2012)—on a tape delay to accommodate Six in the Morning; in September 1996, channel 6 began preempting most of the first hour of (the original) CBS This Morning in favor of an additional hour of its morning newscast (titled Six This Morning), after exercising a network option that allowed affiliates to produce a mix of in-house local segments and a selection of national segments from the first hour of the This Morning broadcast; in January 2008, KOTV began airing the Early Show in its entirety on a one-hour delay from 8:00 to 10:00 a.m., during which the 2012 version of This Morning currently airs. (The station similarly aired predecessor show Morning a half-hour earlier than its recommended slot by way of a live feed tape delay from 1978 to 1982, in favor of airing the half-hour local talk show Tulsa Morning.) In December 1993, the station began to preempt The Bold and the Beautiful (B&B) to make room for an expanded one-hour edition of its noon newscast. Thereafter, B&B could only be viewed within the market via fringe reception or rural cable availability of either KWTV, KOAM-TV in Joplin or KFSM-TV in Fort Smith. CBS eventually gave KOTV permission to air B&B after the network's late night schedule (at 1:05 a.m.) in September 2004. (Sister station KQCW aired the program in its network-recommended slot from September 2006 until January 2007, while continuing to air on KOTV in late night.)

After Face the Nation expanded to a one-hour broadcast in April 2014, as certain other CBS affiliates have done since that time, KOTV aired the first half-hour of the Sunday morning talk show live-to-air on Sunday mornings and the second half-hour early Monday mornings on tape delay until February 2016 (during this time, the program aired in its entirety on KOTV-DT2 off its "live" feed in the form of a partial simulcast with the station's main feed during FTN's first half-hour). To accommodate the network's Saturday morning newscast, channel 6 also aired CBS' Saturday morning children's program block in two separate sub-blocks from January 1995 until September 2010, with much of the block airing in pattern on its normal airdate from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m. and an additional hour airing on Sundays from 7:00 to 8:00 a.m. for most of that period (As of September 2017, the station elects to air the final two hours of the CBS Dream Team educational programming block on Sunday mornings between 7:00 and 9:00 a.m., to make room for CBS This Morning Saturday and a two-hour-long Saturday edition of Six in the Morning.)

Seven years before Griffin Communications acquired the latter station, KOTV and KWTV in Oklahoma City partnered to simulcast three games involving the state's two Central Hockey League franchises, the Tulsa Oilers and the Oklahoma City Blazers, during the league's 1993–94 regular season; the respective sports directors of both stations at that time, Bill Teegins and John Walls, conducted play-by-play for the broadcasts, with KWTV sports anchor Ed Murray (who would later become a news anchor in 1999, and remain in that role until his retirement from television news in 2013) doing color commentary. From 1992 to 2014, KOTV maintained a broadcast partnership with the Sooner Sports Network, holding the local over-the-air broadcast rights to Oklahoma Sooners men's and women's college basketball games as well as weekly coaches programs for the Sooners' basketball and football teams produced through the University of Oklahoma's sports broadcasting unit.

KOTV presently broadcasts 48½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with eight hours each weekday, five hours on Saturdays and 3½ hours on Sundays). In addition, the station broadcasts a 35-minute sports highlight and discussion program on Sunday evenings, Oklahoma Sports Blitz, which is co-hosted by KOTV sports director John Holcomb and KWTV sports director Dean Blevins; the program is produced out of KWTV's studio facility on Kelley Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard in northeast Oklahoma City.

Channel 6's news department began operations along with the station on October 22, 1949, originally consisting of 15-minute-long newscasts at noon and 6:00 p.m., and a half-hour newscast at 10:00 p.m. The newscasts were first anchored by Bob Hower, the first television news anchor in the Tulsa market, who opened that first newscast with the introduction, "Good evening, let's look at the news." At the time of its sign-on, in addition to his news duties, Hower served as KOTV's staff announcer as well as host of the station-produced game show Wishing Well. (After leaving KOTV following his recall into the Army to fight in the Korean War in the fall of 1950, Hower would eventually become known among Tulsa-area viewers during his tenure at KTUL from 1970 to 1986, during which he created the Waiting Child segment series – typically read Associated Press and United Press wire copy headlines – with still newspaper photographs being shown while reading some of the featured stories – four times a week.)

Clayton Vaughn joined KOTV as an anchor and assignment reporter in 1964, working off-and-on at the station for 33 years (with respective stints in Los Angeles and New York City interrupting his tenure at channel 6 from 1969 to 1971, and again from 1979 to 1981). He rejoined KOTV as main anchor of its evening newscasts in 1979, and took on additional duties as managing editor of the news department in 1984. Vaughn remained primary co-anchor until February 28, 1997, when he shifted behind the scenes as full-time managing editor, a role Vaughn continued to hold until he retired from broadcasting in December 1998.

Jim Giles was a fixture for many years as KOTV's chief meteorologist, replacing the retiring Lee Woodward in 1981. During his tenure in the weather department, Giles helped gravitate KOTV to increase its emphasis on weather. He also received numerous awards for his charitable work, having started several community initiatives overseen by the station that help low-income residents, including "Giles' Coats for Kids" (a partnership with The Salvation Army Tulsa Area Command and local dry cleaners to collect donated winter coats and other winter clothing for needy Oklahomans). From 1984 to 2006, Giles and the KOTV weather staff presented the "[Jim Giles] Wild, Wild Weather Show", a weather education tour around Oklahoma communities during the spring and summer that included an hour-long show which taught tornado safety information and promoted the station's severe weather forecasting efforts. In 1991, Giles convinced station management to deploy an automated computer tracking application for use alongside its Doppler radar system; the "Pathfinder" application, which was developed by KOTV employee David Oldham and mirrored a similar application created by KWTV that same year, which projected the arrival time of precipitation at a particular location. In 1994, the station acquired a FirstLook Video system (produced and marketed by Broken Arrow-based PC Designs) that sent photos and near-real-time video over cell phone transmissions using a MacIntosh computer combined with video compression codecs, allowing KOTV's news crews to send video of breaking news and severe weather events over mobile telephone relays for broadcast. Giles remained with KOTV until his retirement from broadcasting on November 21, 2006, citing existing health issues, including the advanced-stage liver cancer that would claim his life one month later on December 21; Travis Meyer – who had worked as a meteorologist at ABC affiliate KTUL since 1981 and spent his last 15 years at channel 8 as its chief meteorologist – joined KOTV as its weeknight 10:00 p.m. meteorologist on June 1, 2005, and subsequently took over as chief meteorologist the following day.

The station's morning newscast, Six in the Morning, debuted on July 14, 1990 as an hour-long broadcast at 6:00 a.m., displacing the CBS Morning News and first-run syndicated religious and news programs that had previously aired in that time period. Focusing mainly on local and national news, weather updates, interviews and lifestyle features, it was initially anchored by Rick Wells (who remained anchor of the program until 2002) and Julie Matsko. Channel 6 became the first Tulsa television station to air its morning newscast after 7:00 a.m. (predating the launch of KOKI's weekday morning newscast twelve years later) in September 1993, when it added a second hour of Six in the Morning and began tape delaying CBS This Morning by one hour. A straight news-based extension program, The News on 6: Morning Update, premiered on March 31, 1997 (this 5:30 a.m. broadcast was originally intended to debut on August 19, 1996, but plans for the expansion were suspended for nearly six months; that broadcast, which was eventually folded into the Six in the Morning banner, expanded into an hour-long broadcast at 5:00 a.m. on October 4, 2004). Other extensions to the newscast were made as time went on, with the addition of an 8:00 hour to the main broadcast on September 3, 1996, and the addition of a 4:30 a.m. half-hour on January 12, 2015. The program underwent a format change in November 2002, which retooled the entire broadcast as a more hard news-focused program, emphasized during the 6:00 a.m. hour. On December 6, 1993, KOTV expanded its noon newscast to one hour.

Since the station came under the ownership of Griffin Communications, KOTV has collaborated with Oklahoma City sister station KWTV to cover local news stories occurring in their respective markets. On August 26, 2001, KOTV premiered the Oklahoma Sports Blitz, a 45-minute-long (later reduced to 35 minutes) statewide sports news program created in partnership with KWTV and airs after the respective late evening newscasts on both stations, which features sports highlights, analysis and commentary and utilizes the resources of the KWTV and KOTV sports departments; it has been hosted since its debut by KOTV sports director John Holcomb and KWTV sports director Dean Blevins. In Tulsa, the program replaced Sunday Sports Special, a weekly sports highlight program (originally running for 15 minutes until September 1999, and then for 35 minutes thereafter) that premiered on KOTV in April 1988. The Sports Blitz has been criticized by Tulsa-area viewers for slanting its coverage toward University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University athletics and not including enough segments about Tulsa area sports teams. Under Griffin ownership, KOTV outfitted its photojournalists with the first digital video cameras in the market.

In April 2006, KOTV debuted a retrofitted Bell JetRanger helicopter for aerial newsgathering (branded as "SkyNews 6," later altered to "Osage SkyNews 6" through a brand licensing agreement with Osage Casino in 2014). KWTV management had sold the helicopter, which it had operated for years under the "Ranger 9" moniker and was fitted with a gyroscopic-zoom camera mounted under the aircraft's nose in 2001, to KOTV after the Oklahoma City station purchased a $1.5-million Bell 407 helicopter equipped with an optical high-definition camera (branded as "SkyNews9 HD"). The two helicopters are occasionally used by both stations to collaborate on aerial coverage of breaking news and severe weather events in areas where the Oklahoma City and Tulsa markets overlap. The helicopter crashed in a field near William R. Pogue Municipal Airport in Sand Springs on June 20, 2007, while it was making a low-level pass above a station ENG truck on the far west side of the airport's main runway during the filming of a station promo, with the rotors of the chopper clipping a satellite antenna near the truck's front end. The out-of-control chopper went down about 100 yards (300 ft) east of the truck's position and left a debris field scattered over several hundred feet to the south edge of the runway (the helicopter's main fuselage and rear assembly crashlanded about 30 feet (9.1 m) away from the tail and rotary blades that had broken away prior to impact). Chopper pilot Joseph Lester (who suffered a head laceration, a minor leg injury and some bruises) and station photographer Nicholas Stone (who escaped without injury) survived the accident. The helicopter was replaced on May 5, 2008, incorporating an additional microprocessor-controlled gyro camera on the craft's tail (branded as "SteadiZoom 360"), which allows for showcasing the chopper's side in profile on the left side of the screen, while showing on-scene footage on the right; further upgrades to "SkyNews 6" were made on July 1, 2014, with the installation of a camera capable of shooting high-definition video.

On September 18, 2006, following the closure of Griffin's purchase of that station from the Cascade Broadcasting Group and coinciding with the station's affiliation change to The CW, KOTV began producing a weeknight-only, half-hour newscast at 9:00 p.m. for KQCW. (The program was expanded to include Saturday and Sunday editions on October 27, 2007, with the weeknight editions expanding to one hour on June 17, 2013; the Saturday and Sunday editions would also expand to an hour five years later, in September 2018.) It directly competes against Fox affiliate KOKI's established hour-long prime time newscast, which had become the ratings leader in that time slot in the years since that program's debut upon the February 2002 launch of channel 23's news department. KOTV subsequently added a weekday morning newscast to KQCW on January 7, 2008, when the 8:00 a.m. hour of Six in the Morning was migrated to that station to allow channel 6 to comply with carriage requirements implemented by CBS at the beginning of the year that required its affiliates to carry the full two-hour broadcast of The Early Show (which was replaced by CBS This Morning in January 2012).

In November 2008, KOTV expanded the Saturday edition of its 10:00 p.m. newscast to a full hour, titling the 10:30 half-hour as News on 6 Late Edition (Oklahoma City sister station KWTV-DT had similarly expanded its Saturday 10:00 p.m. newscast to one hour the year prior). On October 24, 2010, beginning with the 9:00 p.m. newscast on KQCW, KOTV introduced new on-air graphics designed by Hothaus Creative Design, a new station logo (a rounded red square with a "6" in Goudy type, an upside image of the logo adopted by KWTV) and a new slogan ("Oklahoma's Own"), which – along with "The CBS Enforcer Music Collection" news package by Gari Media Group (which KOTV has used since 2006) – was also adopted by Oklahoma City sister station KWTV on that same date. Although its Oklahoma City sister station KWTV upgraded its news programming to high definition with the adoption of the new standardized look, the KOTV and KQCW newscasts were upgraded only to 16:9 widescreen standard definition as the age of the South Frankfort Avenue facility as well as the pending construction of the Brady District facility prevented the duopoly from upgrading its news production to HD at that time.

On January 19, 2013, KOTV and KQCW became the last two television stations in the Tulsa market to upgrade production of their local newscasts to full high definition. With the completion of the duopoly's operational migration into the Griffin Communications Media Center on that date, the KOTV-KQCW news department began utilizing an upgraded Avid MediaCentral platform to provide a digitized, collaborative news workflow that eased access to content from Oklahoma City sister station KWTV to transfer, store and edit for inclusion into their newscasts. On July 5, 2014, KOTV expanded its 6:00 p.m. newscast on Saturday evenings to one hour, after Discover Oklahoma (a statewide-syndicated program produced by the Oklahoma Department of Tourism and Recreation) moved to KTUL. On March 21, 2015, KOTV debuted weekend editions of Six in the Morning, originally anchored by Erin Conrad and meteorologist Stacia Knight; the broadcasts run for two hours from 8:00 to 10:00 a.m. on Saturdays and with a one-hour edition on Sundays on 6:00 to 7:00 a.m., becoming the third television station in the Tulsa market (after KJRH-TV, which launched its own weekend morning newscasts in January 2004, and KOKI-TV, which launched theirs on January 4, 2014) to carry a morning news program on weekends.

For many years, KOTV's newscasts resided at a strong second place (behind KTUL) among viewership totals for the market's local television news operations. This streak continued until 1999, when KOTV overtook KTUL as the most-watched television news outlet in Tulsa. KOTV's news broadcasts continue to win all time periods by comfortable margins, largely aided by the strengths of CBS's prime time programming. In November 2007, the station's 10:00 p.m. newscast was the eighth highest-rated late newscast in the United States.

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KQCW-DT, virtual channel 19 (UHF digital channel 20), is a CW-affiliated television station serving Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States that is licensed to Muskogee. The station is owned by Griffin Communications, as part of a duopoly with Tulsa-licensed CBS affiliate KOTV-DT (channel 6); it is also sister to radio stations KFAQ (1170 AM), KBEZ (92.9 FM), KVOO-FM (98.5), KXBL (99.5 FM) and KHTT (106.9 FM). All of the outlets share studios at the Griffin Communications Media Center on North Boston Avenue and East Cameron Street in the downtown neighborhood's Tulsa Arts District; KQCW's transmitter is located near Harreld Road and North 320 Road (near State Highway 16) in rural northeastern Okmulgee County.

Even though KQCW transmits a digital signal of its own, the broadcasting radius of the station's full-power signal does not reach areas of northeastern Oklahoma north of Tulsa proper, as its transmitter is located 30 miles (48 km) south-southeast of the city. Therefore, the station can also be seen through a 16:9 widescreen standard definition simulcast on KOTV's second digital subchannel in order to reach the entire market. This signal can be seen on UHF channel 26.2 (or virtual channel 6.2 via PSIP) from a transmitter on South 273rd East Avenue (just north of the Muskogee Turnpike) in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.

On cable, KQCW is available on Cox Communications channel 7 in both standard and high definition.

By 1999, Tulsa had become the largest U.S. media market without a full-time affiliate of The WB, which had added broadcast and cable affiliates in three of Oklahoma's primary media markets (Oklahoma City, Lawton–Wichita Falls and Ada–Sherman) during 1998. In lieu of a full-time local affiliate, northeastern Oklahoma residents could view the network's complete lineup via the superstation feed of Chicago affiliate WGN-TV (now standalone cable channel WGN America) on area cable and satellite providers starting with the network's January 11, 1995 launch. However, Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI)'s approximately 170,000 Tulsa-area subscribers lost access to WB programming via WGN on December 31, 1996, when it – along with The Nashville Network and BET – were removed to make room for five new channels being introduced to the lineup (Cartoon Network, TLC, Animal Planet, ESPN2 and HGTV) as part of a company-wide expansion of TCI's basic tier, reducing WGN's availability within the Tulsa metropolitan area to Heartland Cable Television, DirecTV, Dish Network and PrimeStar subscribers. 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 national distribution of WGN's NBA telecasts through its cable feed. (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.)

In January 1995, religious-oriented independent station KWHB (channel 47) became a part-time affiliate of The WB for the Tulsa market, offering family-oriented prime time shows (such as 7th Heaven, The Parent 'Hood, Smart Guy and Sister, Sister) and animated series from its daytime children's block, Kids' WB. The strict content guidelines for secular programs carried on ministerial owner LeSEA Broadcasting's television outlets resulted in KWHB refusing carriage of programs that contained strong profanity, violent or sexual content (such as Savannah, Unhappily Ever After, Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer) on the belief that they would offend the sensibilities of channel 47's mostly Christian and Evangelical viewership, substituting them with ministry and televangelist programs, sports or secular syndicated programs instead. The preempted programs could only be seen in the market via WGN until it ceased distribution of The WB over its national feed in October 1999. The WB would soon begin to regret affiliating with a conservative religious station because of LeSEA's preemption policies, and began making plans to move its programming elsewhere. On August 27, 1998, Tulsa Channel 19 LLC (a group owned by KM Communications president Myoung Hwa Bae, Northwestern Television principal owner Bruce Fox, and Natura Communications owner Todd P. Robinson, whose companies each competed for the permit before agreeing to merge their applications in December 1996) obtained approval for a license and construction permit to sign on a proposed television station on UHF channel 19, a long-unutilized frequency assigned to Muskogee. On March 9, 1999, Larkspur, California-based Tulsa Communications LLC purchased a 51% controlling stake in KWBT for $4.59 million; the sale was finalized on June 1, 1999.

Channel 19 first signed on the air as KWBT (for "WB Tulsa," in reference to the affiliation) at 8:00 a.m. on September 12, 1999. The station – which became the first full-time WB affiliate to service the Tulsa market at its sign-on – originally operated from studio facilities located at the intersection of East 14th Street and South 69th East Avenue in southeast Tulsa. Alongside WB prime time programming and a blend of cartoons from both Kids' WB and via the syndication market, KWBT initially carried recent and classic off-network sitcoms and drama series, some first-run syndicated scripted programs, talk shows, court shows and reality-based lifestyle and dating series, and sporting events. Since KWBT signed on just as The WB was preparing to add a sixth night (Friday) to its prime time schedule, channel 19 did not rely as much on feature films to fill its evening schedule like other WB-affiliated stations that had joined the network beforehand, opting instead to offer three movie presentations per week on weekend afternoons as well as a 7:00 p.m. movie showcase on Saturdays. Some of the syndication offerings on KWBT's initial lineup previously were not able to obtain local carriage due to the lack of available time slot clearances on Tulsa's five major network affiliates – NBC affiliate KJRH-TV (channel 2), CBS affiliate KOTV (channel 6), ABC affiliate KTUL (channel 8), Fox affiliate KOKI-TV (channel 23) and UPN affiliate KTFO (channel 41, now MyNetworkTV affiliate KMYT-TV) – as well as KWHB. (For the reasons concerning The WB's prior partnership with KWHB, in preparation for the network's fall 1999 premiere week, KWBT included some returning WB prime time shows that channel 47 had declined to carry, as part of an evening catch-up block that aired during the week of September 12.)

For its first week of operation, the station – which branded as "WB19" – was only receivable via antenna, which, because its transmitter was located farther south than the area's other television stations, resulted in it being unviewable north of the immediate Tulsa metropolitan area. On September 20, TCI – which, as a byproduct of a corporate breakup tied to AT&T's purchase of TCI, would sell its Tulsa cable franchise to Cox Communications in February 2000 – began offering it on channel 19, which created the ironic situation of KWBT's UHF broadcast signal interfering with its cable slot on the same frequency. To alleviate this issue and to ensure competitivity with other local stations, in October 2000, Cox moved the station to channel 12 per a channel slot swap agreement between KWBT and Rogers State University-owned educational independent station KRSC-TV (channel 35, now KRSU-TV), in which KWBT management would also provide scholarships and internships for RSU communications students for five years, and establish an endowment chair post in the university's communications department. (The station would include its cable position in its on-air branding in September 2004, when it began to identify as "Tulsa's WB19, Cable 12".)

On December 20, 2001, the Tulsa Communications-Tulsa Channel 19 venture sold KWBT to Spokane, Washington-based Cascade Broadcasting Group. In January 2004, KWBT migrated its engineering and master control operations to the offices of Tucson, Arizona sister station KWBA-TV. The move resulted in the layoffs of eight station engineers who were employed in the station's technical and master control departments. On October 8, 2005, Oklahoma City-based Griffin Communications – the founding owner of that city's CBS affiliate, KWTV, which had acquired KOTV from the Belo Corporation in October 2000 – announced that it would purchase KWBT from Cascade Broadcasting for $14.5 million. Under the terms of the two-part deal, Griffin immediately assumed responsibility for KWBT's advertising sales and administrative operations under a joint sales agreement. When the deal was finalized in January 2006, KOTV and KWBT became the second legal television station duopoly in the Tulsa market, joining KOKI-TV and KTFO, which had been jointly operated since November 1993 and came under common ownership in May 2000. After the transaction was finalized on December 13, 2005, KWBT subsequently migrated its operations into annexed space in the Pierce Building on Third Street and Detroit Avenue; Griffin opted not to consolidate the station's operations into KOTV's original South Frankfort Avenue studio facility (where KQCW's master control was housed after Griffin transferred those operations back to the city) in downtown Tulsa following the transaction's completion, as the building was not large enough to house the expanded duopoly staff (which had increased from a total of around 130 employees under KOTV's final years as a Belo property to around 180 in the period from when Griffin took ownership of channel 6 to the completion of the KQCW acquisition).

On November 10, 2005, beginning with the inaugural evening drawings of its Pick 3 and Cash 5 games that night, KWBT became the Tulsa area broadcasterfor the Oklahoma Lottery. The drawings – which aired live at 9:20 p.m. nightly – were produced at the studio facility shared by the lottery's two Oklahoma City-based flagship outlets, KOKH-TV and KOCB, which simulcast the live drawings until the Oklahoma Lottery Commission began drawing the winning numbers via random number generator in September 2009. In January 2006, when Oklahoma became a participant in the multi-state lottery, the station began airing Powerball drawings—previously seen in the Tulsa market only through WGN America, which discontinued national carriage of the live drawings for Powerball and companion multi-state lottery Mega Millions in 2013—each Wednesday and Saturday night. The local television rights to the Oklahoma Lottery drawings transferred exclusively to cable via the Tulsa feed of The Cox Channel (now YurView Oklahoma) in September 2007, where they would remain until reductions to the Oklahoma Lottery Commission's budget resulted in daily drawings for Pick 3 and Cash 5—both of which were switched to a random number generator structure—being relegated exclusively to the Lottery's website on July 1, 2009.

On January 24, 2006, WB network parent Time Warner (through its Warner Bros. Entertainment division) and UPN parent company CBS Corporation announced that they would dissolve the two networks to create The CW, a joint venture between the two media companies that initially featured programs from its two predecessor networks as well as original first-run series produced for the new network. On April 10, 2006, in an affiliate press release published by network management, KWBT was confirmed as The CW's Tulsa charter affiliate. Since the network chose its charter stations based on which of them among The WB and UPN's respective affiliate bodies was the highest-rated in each market, KWBT was chosen to join The CW over KTFO as – at the time of the agreement – it had been the higher-rated of the two stations, even though channel 41 had beaten KWBT to the airwaves by fifteen years.

KTFO's status was left undetermined until June 15, when Clear Channel Television confirmed that channel 41 would become the market's affiliate of MyNetworkTV, for which News Corporation announced its formation on February 22 as a new joint network venture between its then-sibling subsidiaries Fox Television Stations and Twentieth Television (the former is now part of Fox Corporation, and the latter now operates as a unit of The Walt Disney Company by way of Disney's 2019 acquisition of 21st Century Fox) to provide a network programming option for UPN and WB stations that were not chosen to affiliate with The CW, in lieu of converting to a general entertainment independent format.

As the station had the "WB" initialism in its call letters, Griffin management decided to take advantage of the new network for branding purposes and changed its callsign to reflect its new affiliation. On May 23, Griffin Communications applied to change the station's call letters to KQCW (intending to mean "Quality Television, The CW"); the callsign change became official on June 30. KQCW adopted a new logo based around The CW's standardized affiliate logo design that August, at which time the station changed its on-air branding to "CW 12," opting to identify exclusively by its Cox cable channel placement; however it officially remained a WB affiliate until the network ceased operations on September 17, 2006. Channel 19 became a charter affiliate of The CW when that network debuted the following day on September 18. Meanwhile, channel 41 (which changed its calls to KMYT-TV two months earlier, also in a move to take advantage of its new network for branding use) had joined MyNetworkTV upon that network's launch on September 5. On September 3, 2007, in order to allay confusion among viewers over where to find KQCW over-the-air or on cable, the station changed its branding to "CW12/19," incorporating its over-the-air channel number with its Cox channel placement. On July 1, 2009, the station changed its branding once again to "Tulsa CW", restricting on-air references to its over-the-air channel number to required hourly station identifications.

On January 19, 2013, Griffin migrated KOTV/KQCW's news, sales and marketing departments and the operations of co-owned website management firm Griffin New Media into the Griffin Communications Media Center, a newly constructed, 50,000-square-foot (4,645 m2) studio and office complex located on North Boston Avenue and East Cameron Street in downtown Tulsa's Brady Arts District (renamed the Tulsa Arts District in September 2017); all remaining operations were moved into the new facility by January 20. The facility – which was dedicated in the names of company founders John T. Griffin and Martha Griffin, and began construction on April 8, 2008, before being delayed for three years due to the global recession – incorporates a 5,400-square-foot (502 m2) production studio (which is sound-proofed with multiple layers of sheet rock and insulation in the walls and ceiling, and incorporates upgraded equipment that allowed for KOTV/KQCW to begin producing its news programming to full high definition); an adjoining 7,000-square-foot (650 m2) newsroom; two control rooms that relay high definition content; and LED lighting equipment throughout the building and an underground system of 32 geothermal heating and cooling wells beneath its parking lot to reduce electricity costs.

In addition to carrying the entire CW network schedule, syndicated programs broadcast on KQCW-DT as of September 2019 include The Big Bang Theory, Judge Mathis, Mom, black-ish, Access Hollywood, 2 Broke Girls, The Jerry Springer Show, Lauren Lake's Paternity Court, Personal Injury Court, Dr. Phil, and The Dr. Oz Show.

Occasionally as time permits, KQCW may air CBS network programs normally seen on KOTV in the event that channel 6 is unable to air them because of extended breaking news coverage; however, because of channel 19's CW programming commitments, this capacity is primarily held by KOTV's News on 6 Now subchannel. The station had served in that capacity on a regular basis from September 2006 until January 2007, when channel 19 began carrying the CBS soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful (B&B) from the network's "live" feed at 12:30 p.m. (KOTV has not aired B&B in its regular daytime slot since December 1993, when it discontinued carriage of the program as a result of the expansion of the station's weekday noon newscast to a one-hour broadcast; CBS eventually gave KOTV permission to air the soap after the network's late night schedule at 1:05 a.m. in September 2004.) As KWBT, the station carried the ABC late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live! from April 2003 to April 2004, airing it in lieu of KTUL, which had declined to air the program in order to continue carrying off-network and first-run syndicated programs following that station's 10:00 p.m. newscast.

Since August 2000, under an agreement with the team's Silverstar Network syndication service, channel 19 has held the local broadcast rights to select NFL games and ancillary programs involving the Dallas Cowboys. KQCW carries between three and five Cowboys games each year during the NFL preseason as well as various team-related programs during the regular season such as the Cowboys Postgame Show, Special Edition with Jerry Jones, the head coach's weekly analysis program The Jason Garrett Show, along with specials such as the Making of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders Calendar and postseason team reviews. Because The WB and The CW have never offered a full seven-night-per-week schedule of network programs, to accommodate preseason games, KWBT/KQCW rescheduled any displaced prime time network shows to open weekend afternoon or evening timeslots normally occupied by movies, syndicated shows or paid programming (as it previously had done for some Big 12 basketball games). In addition, through CBS' contract with the American Football Conference (AFC), sister station KOTV carries occasional interconference games against AFC opponents of the Cowboys during the regular season, which, since 2014, has also included certain cross-flexed games passed over by Fox. (Most Cowboys regular season telecasts are carried in the Tulsa market on KOKI-TV, through Fox's primary contractual rights to the National Football Conference [NFC], with an additional one to two games per season airing on KJRH-TV, through NBC's rights to the Sunday Night Football package.) Since 2000, the station has also carried Kansas City Chiefs preseason games produced by the AFC team's Chiefs Television Network syndication service.

From 2000 to 2014, KWBT/KQCW carried college basketball games distributed by ESPN Plus involving teams from the Big 12 Conference, consisting of about ten to twelve games per year during the regular season – most of which aired on Saturday afternoons, with occasional prime time games being shown during the work week – and most games held during the first three rounds of the Big 12 Men's Basketball Tournament. Separately, from 2000 to 2011, the station also carried select basketball games involving the Oklahoma Sooners through agreements with the university-run Sooner Sports Network syndication service.

In January 2006, KWBT signed a contract with the Tulsa Talons to broadcast regular season games from the AF2 arena football franchise, assuming the rights from KWHB, which had maintained a contract with the team for the 2005 season. (Talons co-owner Henry Primeaux cited KWHB's telecasts of the sixteen games played during the 2005 regular season as a partial cause of a 14% year-to-year increase in ticket sales for the 2005 season.) Following the move to KWBT, ratings for Talons home games declined sharply with the team's four early-season road games of the 2006 season producing higher viewership compared to the remainder of the schedule, which saw ratings for most of the home telecasts floating just barely above "hashmark" levels (viewership too low to register a single ratings point). This led the Talons to cancel telecasts of its six remaining home games, opting to reduce the 2006 broadcast schedule to encompass five of its remaining road games, citing higher viewership for the previous road broadcasts (although, a July game against the Bossier–Shreveport Battle Wings was later dropped from the television schedule because of high broadcast rights expenses). The Talons' contract with KQCW was not renewed for the 2007 season.

As of September 2021, not counting an additional two-hour-long simulcast of that station's weekday morning news program, KOTV produces 12 hours of locally produced newscasts each week for KQCW (with two hours on weekdays, and an hour each on Saturdays and Sundays).

On September 18, 2006, following the completion of Griffin's acquisition of KQCW and coinciding with the station's affiliation change to The CW, KOTV began producing a half-hour prime time newscast at 9:00 p.m. for channel 19, titled The News on 6 at 9:00 on CW12 (the program's title was later revised slightly to correspond with KQCW's branding change to "CW 12/19" in September 2007 and then to "Tulsa CW" in July 2009). Debuting as a weeknight-only program that was originally anchored by then-KOTV reporters Omar Villafranca and Jennifer Loren alongside meteorologist Katie Green, it became a competitor to an hour-long newscast in that timeslot on KOKI-TV, which had become the ratings leader in the time period since the Fox affiliate established its in-house news department in February 2002. On that same date, through an agreement with news-talk radio station KRMG (740 AM), KQCW also began airing an hour-long television simulcast of the KRMG Morning Show's weekday 6:00 a.m. hour. (Ironically, KRMG would become a sister property to KOKI after Cox Media Group finalized its purchase of channel 23 in December 2012.) KQCW discontinued the KRMG simulcast after the September 10, 2011 telecast.

On October 27, 2007, channel 19 expanded the 9:00 p.m. newscast to include weekend editions on Saturday and Sunday nights (with weekend evening anchor LaToya Silmon, meteorologist Dick Faurot and weekend sports anchor Scott Smith initially helming the broadcast on those nights). On January 7, 2008, KOTV migrated the 8:00 a.m. hour of its weekday morning newscast, Six in the Morning (which channel 6 had been airing in that timeslot since it added a third hour to the program in September 1993), to KQCW; the move was done in order for KOTV to comply with carriage requirements implemented at the beginning of 2008 by CBS that required its affiliates to carry the full two-hour broadcast of The Early Show (which was replaced by CBS This Morning in January 2012). On October 24, 2010, KOTV began broadcasting its newscasts in 16:9 widescreen standard definition; the KQCW morning and evening newscasts were included in the upgrade.

The weeknight editions of the 9:00 newscast would expand to one hour on June 17, 2013, coinciding with the arrival of Chera Kimiko (who had served as an original co-anchor of KOKI's evening newscasts from February 2002 until January 2013) as anchor of the program; the Saturday and Sunday editions expanded to an hour on September 10, 2018. At the time of Kimiko's arrival, a nightly interactive segment, "OK Talk," was added to the newscast, featuring viewer questions and comments submitted via social media about stories featured on the broadcast. On September 9, 2013, the KQCW Six in the Morning broadcast was expanded to include a simulcast of the 6:00 to 8:00 a.m. block that had been airing exclusively on KOTV prior to that date. After KOTV/KQCW formally began operating from the Griffin Communications Media Center facility, KOTV upgraded its local newscast production to full high definition (becoming the fourth and last television station in the Tulsa market and the state of Oklahoma to make the transition) on January 19, 2013; as with the 2010 upgrade to widescreen SD, the KQCW newscast was included in the upgrade.

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News 9 Now and News on 6 Now are American regional digital broadcast television networks that are owned by Griffin Communications. The channels simulcast and rebroadcast local news programming seen on Griffin-owned CBS affiliates KWTV-DT (channel 9) in Oklahoma City and KOTV-DT (channel 6) in Tulsa, Oklahoma in their respective markets, along with select other programs. News 9 Now is broadcast on KWTV digital subchannel 9.2 in the Oklahoma City market, while News on 6 Now is broadcast on KOTV digital subchannel 6.3 in the Tulsa market. On cable, the individual channels are available on Cox Communications channel 53 in their respective markets.

The services were developed out of News Now 53, a regional cable news channel that operated from December 1996 to April 2011, which was operated by Cox Communications Oklahoma in conjunction with Griffin Communications, and was carried on cable systems within Cox's Oklahoma service area.

The concept of the channel dates back to the August 1993 extension of a retransmission consent agreement made between KWTV and Oklahoma City area cable providers Cox Cable (which rebranded as Cox Communications in 1996) and Multimedia Cablevision (whose systems in suburban areas of the city were acquired by Cox in 2000) to continue carriage of the station's signal; as part of the deal, KWTV announced that it would create a locally originated cable channel providing news, sports and weather information for the two providers.

The service, which was named News Now 53, first launched on December 3, 1996 exclusively on Cox's systems in Oklahoma City and certain inner suburbs; it aired both live airings and rebroadcasts of KWTV's daily local news programs as well as occasional specials produced by the station's news department. Following Griffin's 2000 acquisition of KOTV from the Belo Corporation, News Now 53 expanded to Cox's Tulsa service area, carrying live daily newscasts and news replays from KOTV.

Until the mid-2000s, News Now 53 carried live telecasts of KWTV – and later KOTV's newscasts – in the event that either station was unable to air its regularly scheduled evening newscasts due to CBS sports telecasts that run into that timeslot. In 2008, the channel underwent a graphical revamp, with the introduction of a new logo and the implementation of a new "L" bar (which was an expansion to the graphical display that featured only the current time and temperature as well as notifications regarding the newscast that was being rebroadcast at that time), displaying five-day forecasts for the respective markets, along with banner advertisements for Cox Communications and local area businesses. This "L" bar – which evolved into its current format displaying current conditions and 24-hour forecasts for various weather observation sites around Oklahoma on the lower portion of the screen with banner ads remaining on the right-hand portion.

On April 1, 2011, Griffin Communications took over the operations of News Now 53 from Cox Communications, and both the Oklahoma City and Tulsa area feeds of News Now 53 were reformatted into two separate services: News 9 Now and News on 6 Now; along with the existing cable coverage, both feeds began to be broadcast over-the-air for the first time as multicast channels of KWTV and KOTV's digital signals, and allowed cable providers in the state outside of Cox Communications to carry the channel. In the Tulsa area, the launch of News on 6 Now on KOTV digital channel 6.3, resulted in the movie-oriented digital broadcast network This TV to be relocated to digital channel 19.2 of KOTV's CW-affiliated sister station KQCW-DT.

The channels broadcast KOTV and KWTV's newscasts in 16:9 widescreen, as both KWTV and KOTV broadcast their newscasts in that format (both stations broadcast their news programming in high definition, with KOTV upgrading from enhanced definition to HD in January 2013, although the two channels broadcast programming in downconverted 480i standard definition); however, news rebroadcasts on News 9 Now are shown in a stretched center cut 4:3 display.

On April 12, 2011, Cox restricted the channels to its digital service; this required customers in the Oklahoma City and Tulsa markets with analog-only cable service to rent a CableCARD or digital cable converter, or purchase a television set with a digital cable-ready QAM tuner to continue to receive News 9 Now and News on 6 Now programming.

With the relaunch of News Now 53 as two individually-branded services, plans originally called for KWTV and KOTV to use the channels to provide additional coverage during severe weather events; however in such cases, the channels instead take on the responsibility of broadcasting CBS network and syndicated programs normally seen on the main channel during extended breaking news and severe weather coverage.

Although News 9 and News on 6 Now are intended to operate as news rebroadcast channels, the two services also carry a three-hour block of children's programs on Saturday mornings, in order to comply with Federal Communications Commission educational programming rules that require digital subchannels to carry additional educational programming, regardless of the subchannel's intended format. News 9 Now also broadcasts CBS This Morning Saturday in lieu of KWTV and Face the Nation in its entirety as KWTV does not broadcast the second half-hour of the program live from the CBS network feed (the first half-hour airs on Sunday mornings in tandem with News 9 Now's broadcast of the program, while KWTV's main channel airs the second half of the program on a tape delay on Sunday nights/early Monday mornings).