KOZK's history can be traced to the founding of Springfield Community Television, a
nonprofit group that was formed in 1974 to bring
public television to the area. At the time, it was standard practice for PBS to offer its programming to
commercial television outlets in markets without a PBS station of their own. For instance, Springfield
NBC affiliate
KYTV (channel 3) and Joplin
ABC affiliate
KODE (channel 12) aired
Sesame Street at 9 a.m. during the week. After securing a license from the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and funding from various groups, Springfield Community Television was able to launch its first station. KOZK first signed on the air on January 20, 1975, broadcasting from a former
Naval Reserve center located on the campus of
Drury University. From there, the station originally broadcast five days a week with seven employees on its staff (augmented by a lot of student volunteerism), eventually expanding to a 24-hour operation with 25 employees. The station borrowed transmitter space from Springfield
CBS affiliate
KOLR (channel 10). On June 1, 1986, KOZJ signed on from Joplin as KOZK's sister station. Its business offices are located in downtown Joplin, with its broadcasting equipment located at
Missouri Southern State University. Prior to that station's sign-on, the Joplin–
Pittsburg market had been one of the few markets in the United States that did not have a PBS member station of their own, although PBS programming could be received over the air via
KOED-TV (in the southwestern portion of the market),
KTWU-TV (in the northwestern portion), or via KOZK (in the eastern portion). In 1990, the station moved its operations to the new Shewmaker Communications Center on the campus of Drury College. In 2001, the board agreed to sell the station to Southwest Missouri State University (now
Missouri State University); later that year, the station's operations moved to Strong Hall on the MSU campus. Two years later, in 2003, KOZK moved its transmitter facilities to a broadcast tower located on Switchgrass Road in rural southwestern Webster County (north of
Fordland), which was donated to the university by KYTV station management. On April 19, 2018, at about 9:32 a.m., the KOZK transmission tower collapsed as maintenance was being done on the structure. The maintenance involved upgrades to the tower in preparation for the station's upcoming allocation shift under the spectrum repack. The six-person maintenance crew employed with
Columbia, South Carolina–based Tower Consultants Inc., who were working replacing crossbeams at about the mark of the tower as they began to realize that the tower had likely become structurally unstable, vacated the tower shortly before it collapsed. One worker, 56-year-old Stephen Lamay, died from injuries sustained when he became trapped under the tower debris. Three other workers were transported to area hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries and were subsequently released. While KOZK's signal was off the air, it continued to be available to
Mediacom subscribers via a direct auxiliary feed transmitted by fiber optic to the cable provider; service was restored to
AT&T U-verse and
DirecTV customers by April 20, while it was unavailable on
Dish Network (as of April 23, 2018). The tower was also used by local
NOAA Weather Radio station WXL46, whose signal also went off-air. In March 2020, KOZK and KOZJ added
World Channel to 21.4 and 26.4, respectively. ==Technical information==