The station signed on as KDUB-TV on June 1, 1970, on channel 40 as an
ABC affiliate. Original owner Dubuque Communications Corporation, owned by Gerald J. Green, his brother Timothy, and their wives, had been established in May 1968, even after Green had been advised that Dubuque was too small to support a television station; the station was initially unable to obtain an affiliation with any of
the three television networks before ABC finally agreed to affiliate with KDUB-TV. In 1972, Gerald Green, who also served as station president and general manager, was embroiled in a controversy with the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over whether $19,000 he paid to an ABC network representative was a bribe. Green testified that he thought the money was a legitimate expense in obtaining the network affiliation. Green was later exonerated, but the ABC executive was found guilty of extorting payoffs. After encountering financial difficulties, KDUB-TV ceased operations at 11:06p.m. on September 30, 1974, after that night's
Monday Night Football telecast; the shutdown was announced to viewers during halftime by news director Jim Esmoil, who said that the station would be leaving the air instead of producing a newscast that night. Much of KDUB-TV's equipment was repossessed by the station's largest creditor,
RCA. The closure came after Green spent two years trying to sell the station, including unsuccessful negotiations with the Moline Television Corporation, owner of
Quad Cities station
WQAD-TV. of
Rockford, Illinois. Lloyd Hearing Aid Corp. would sell the station to the
Commercial Dispatch Publishing Company in 1979; the $1.5 million sale to Birney Imes Jr. and his family added KDUB-TV to a broadcast group that included
WCBI-TV in
Columbus, Mississippi,
WBOY-TV in
Clarksburg, West Virginia, and several Mississippi radio stations. Dubuque TV
Limited Partnership, led by general partner Thomas Bond, acquired the station in April 1985; Bond, whose group paid $3.25 million for KDUB-TV, had been a manager at WCBI-TV. The first and only television station to be based out of Dubuque, KDUB was originally based in an office building just south of Dubuque, near
Key West, Iowa. The station eventually moved into offices on the ninth floor of the former
Roshek's Department Store building in downtown Dubuque, and later moved to its current location on Main Street. For a number of years, KDUB and
KCRG-TV (channel 9), the ABC affiliate in
Cedar Rapids, were in conflict with each other. In 1981, KDUB won a decision in which the Dubuque cable company was required to
black out KCRG when the same shows were shown at the same time on both stations. that December, Bond announced that KDUB would be sold to Sage Broadcasting, a
Stamford, Connecticut–based radio station group, for $4 million. While the sale would receive FCC approval in early 1989, In April 1990, KDUB's owners sued KCRG, claiming its objections led to the sale falling through. Most programming was simulcast from KFXA, but KFXB would continue its news operation (at that time, KFXA had no newscast at all). Prior to this, KOCR served as the network's over-the air affiliate for most of the southern portion of the market while
Foxnet (which had launched in 1991) served as the network's cable-only affiliate for the remainder of the market, including the cities of
Waterloo and Dubuque (it was carried on cable channel 13 in Dubuque); between October 7, 1994, and August 12, 1995, Foxnet was carried on all cable systems in most of Eastern Iowa as KOCR was off the air during that time due to financial issues. The first season of the
NFL on Fox was carried by Cedar Rapids CBS affiliate
KGAN, which had a greater coverage area than KOCR; Foxnet was
blacked out during the games. KFXB's eight news staffers were laid off in the transition, with its former reporters telling the
Telegraph Herald that the first indication of the planned change was a promo aired during
Fox's baseball coverage. In September 2004, Dubuque TV Limited Partnership sold the station to the Christian Television Network, who switched the station to its primarily-
religious programming; general partner Tom Bond, who would stay with the relaunched KFXB as general manager, said that he felt that Christian programming was "the niche that the station could best fill in this market". Fox programming would continue to be transmitted on KFXA—which would operate as the sole Fox affiliate for northeast Iowa. At that time, KFXB lost its longstanding channel 4 assignment on
Mediacom's Dubuque cable system to KFXA, with KFXB being moved to channel 14. Mediacom would add KFXB to its Cedar Rapids and
Iowa City systems in 2005. KFXB has been digital-only since February 17, 2009. ==Subchannels==