KHQA went on-the-air September 23, 1953. The station was originally owned by
Lee Enterprises of
Davenport, Iowa, along with the
Hannibal Courier-Post and WTAD radio (
930 AM and 99.5 FM, now
WCOY). Despite the common ownership, Lee was unable to use the WTAD-TV calls because
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules of the time did not allow stations to share common base callsigns if they were licensed in different cities. While licensed to Hannibal (hence accounting for the "H" in its callsign, as well as its callsign beginning with a "K"), its studios have long been located across the
Mississippi River in Quincy; the station signed on after the FCC allowed a station to base its main studio outside its city of license. Channel 7 received its
DuMont transmitters on July 27, 1953. They arrived on the same truck as the transmitters for future rival
WGEM-TV (channel 10). The two stations' crews raced to be the first television station in the Tri-State. Ultimately, WGEM-TV won the race, signing on September 4, more than two weeks before channel 7. KHQA has always been a primary CBS affiliate, although it had a secondary affiliation with
DuMont between 1953 and 1956. The station shared a secondary ABC affiliation with WGEM-TV in the 1960s. KHQA also aired a number of
UPN programs during late-night hours between 1995 and 2006. Lee sold the
Courier-Post in 1969, but held onto its Quincy broadcasting cluster until December 1986 when the company sold KHQA to A. Richard Benedek, whose television holdings eventually became
Benedek Broadcasting. The radio stations were sold to Eastern Broadcasting. Lee earned a handsome return on its purchase of WTAD radio in 1944. At the time of the sale, KHQA was the smallest station in Lee's TV portfolio. Benedek declared bankruptcy and sold most of its stations to
Gray Television in 2002, but KHQA was sold to Chelsey Broadcasting; Gray would ultimately acquire
Quincy Media, parent company of
WGEM AM–
FM–TV, in 2021. KHQA,
WHOI in
Peoria, and
WEYI-TV in
Saginaw, Michigan, became the first three stations owned by the newly formed
Barrington Broadcasting in April 2004. In early 1998, KHQA left its longtime home in the Western
Catholic Union building in downtown Quincy. The station moved into a new state-of-the-art facility located on South 36th Street. On August 28, 2007, KHQA announced that a new second digital subchannel would begin carrying ABC for the Tri-States, replacing sister station
KTVO (which had been ABC's affiliate of record in the Quincy market). This was launched on September 30. On February 28, 2013, Barrington announced that it would exit from broadcasting and sell off its entire group, including KHQA-TV, to
Sinclair Broadcast Group. The sale was completed on November 25. On February 26, 2020, it was revealed that KHQA would undergo the same transition as Sinclair sister stations
WNWO-TV in
Toledo, Ohio, and
WOLF-TV in
Scranton, Pennsylvania, having their newscasts hubbed by another station. News management, production, and anchors would be moved to
WICD in
Champaign, Illinois. Weather and some reporters would be allowed to stay local, with an unspecified number of other employees allowed to move to Champaign. These changes went into effect later in the year. On November 7, 2024, it was announced that KTVO and KHQA would merge their news departments into a new operation called
Tri-State Trusted, which would cover both the
Ottumwa–
Kirksville and Quincy–Hannibal–Keokuk markets. Newscasts would originate from the KTVO studios but also feature local content produced by KHQA. The new operation launched with the morning newscast on December 9. On March 11, 2025, it was reported that Sinclair (KHQA Licensee,
LLC) would sell five TV stations, including KHQA and KTVO, to Rincon Broadcasting Group, led by Todd Parkin. The sale was approved by the FCC on July 1, and completed on July 9. == Technical information ==