Early history KGBT-TV's roots lie in the 1941 establishment of
KGBS radio, an independent radio station with a staff of eleven people. The station was owned by the Harbenito Broadcasting Company, controlled former
Valley Morning Star publisher McHenry Tichenor, and became an
affiliate of the
CBS Radio Network in 1943. The first television station in the market was
XELD-TV (channel 7); founded in 1951, it served as an end-run around the
Federal Communications Commission's freeze on television license grants. Once this was lifted in 1952, the radio stations on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande got their opportunity to pursue television stations of their own. On May 20, 1953, Magic Triangle Televisors, Inc., an affiliate of KGBS, was granted a construction permit for channel 4. later in the year, KGBS bought the KSOX facility and moved from 1240 to 1530 kHz. On October 4, 1953, KGBS-TV made its debut with
CBS television programming. The call letters were changed to KGBT-TV on December 9, though the new designation was not used until the start of 1954, when the radio station also became KGBT. The next year,
KRGV-TV channel 5 started with
NBC programs, and XELD-TV closed. For the next 22 years, the two stations split
ABC programming; when KRGV-TV changed to being a primary ABC affiliate in 1976, KGBT-TV became a joint CBS-NBC affiliate until KVEO-TV began in 1981. Channel 4 remained under Tichenor ownership for more than 30 years and was the traditional ratings leader in the Rio Grande Valley for news. However, as Tichenor's broadcasting empire became specialized in Spanish-language radio, KGBT-TV became an outlier. In 1986, Tichenor sold KGBT-TV to
Draper Communications of
Salisbury, Maryland, which at the time owned
WBOC-TV in that city and
KOAM-TV in
Pittsburg, Kansas. The station was then purchased in 1998 by Cosmos Broadcasting, the broadcasting division of the
Liberty Corporation, for $42 million. Cosmos came directly under the Liberty banner in 2001 when Liberty sold off its insurance business.
Barrington and Sinclair ownership On August 25, 2005, Liberty Corporation announced that it would sell all 15 stations it owned to
Raycom Media. Raycom, however, then earmarked several stations for divestiture in order to meet local and national ownership limits or because they were located far from the company's focus areas; these included two of the Liberty stations, KGBT-TV and
WWAY-TV in
Wilmington, North Carolina. The Liberty deal was then completed on January 31, 2006. On March 27, 2006, KGBT-TV was sold to
Barrington Broadcasting as part of a group deal that included 11 other Raycom stations. The FCC approved the deal in June 2006, and the purchase closed August 11. Barrington then sold its 18-station portfolio to
Sinclair Broadcast Group in 2013.
Sale to Nexstar Media Group In 2017, Sinclair
attempted to acquire
Tribune Media. The acquisition collapsed in August 2018, after which Tribune was instead acquired by Nexstar. Tribune had previously filed a breach of contract lawsuit against Sinclair, which Sinclair and Nexstar—as successor-in-interest to Tribune—settled on January 28, 2020. As part of the settlement, Sinclair paid Nexstar $60 million and sold
WDKY-TV in
Lexington, Kentucky, and the non-license and programming assets of KGBT-TV to Nexstar. KGBT-TV's CBS affiliation, news department, and syndicated programming moved to KVEO's second subchannel the next day. On-air operations mostly remained unchanged, though viewers were asked to rescan their sets in order to continue watching CBS. However, few viewers actually lost access to CBS programming due to the high penetration of cable and satellite in the market. The KGBT-TV license itself continued to be owned by Sinclair and continued to broadcast its existing digital multicast offerings, with the main 4.1 subchannel silent on the multiplex. The acquisition of the KGBT-TV intellectual unit also allowed Nexstar to move all of KVEO-TV's operations to the KGBT-TV facility in Harlingen and replace the local newscasts it had offered on that station, presented from
El Paso, with a news service fully produced locally. In May 2021,
Mission Broadcasting, a company whose stations contract with Nexstar for operational services, acquired KGBT-TV; Nexstar then announced on July 19 of that year that it would purchase the station outright. The deal was completed on September 15. Nexstar immediately reactivated the main 4.1 subchannel to carry its
Antenna TV network, which had never been carried in the market prior; MyNetworkTV, which had previously been on
KFXV, was added to the subchannel on October 1. The KGBT-TV tower in La Feria was brought down on March 8, 2024, after two of its 24
guy wires snapped, causing the mast to lean. The tower situation led to the evacuation of nearby homes as well as the cancellation of classes in the
La Feria Independent School District. ==News operation==