ABC affiliation KPVI signed on April 26, 1974, as an
ABC affiliate. It was originally owned by Eastern Idaho Television Corporation, which also owned sister station KIVI-TV in Boise, Idaho. Previously, ABC had been carried on a shared basis by both
CBS affiliate KID-TV (channel 3, now
KIDK) and NBC affiliate
KIFI-TV. Idaho Television Company sold both KPVI and sister station KIVI to Futura Titanium Corporation in 1977 for $655,850. On August 23, 1983, Ambassador Media, a newly formed entity controlled by
U.S. Senator William L. Armstrong and KPVI's then-
general manager Brian Hogan, announced it would be purchasing KPVI from Futura for $2.7 million. Additionally, Ambassador would pay Futura stockholders $500,000 as part of an agreement to not compete with Ambassador through the purchase or establishment of another television station in the Idaho Falls-Pocatello market. Futura had already divested KIVI two years earlier. Hogan stated that the name of the company came from
scripture — that Armstrong felt that the new company was "going to be ambassadors to God," as Hogan put it. In early 1995, KPVI became a secondary affiliate of
UPN; it cleared the network's highest-rated program,
Star Trek: Voyager, as a replacement for
NYPD Blue, which it deemed to be too vulgar for airing in the Pocatello market. In April 1995,
Sunbelt Communications Company purchased KPVI and satellite stations
KJVI in
Jackson, Wyoming and
KKVI in
Twin Falls from Ambassador. The FCC approved the sale on September 29.
Switch to NBC The three stations remained with ABC until January 1996 when KPVI and KJVI switched to NBC, swapping affiliations with KIFI. Since NBC programming in Twin Falls was provided by Boise NBC affiliate KTVB via translator, KKVI (which had served as a secondary affiliate of
Fox since its 1989 sign-on) dropped its affiliation with ABC and became a full Fox affiliate. As a result, the secondary UPN affiliation that KPVI carried was moved to KIDK, where it would remain until
KXPI-LP signed on in 2001. KJVI, which became KJWY several months later, remained a
semi-satellite of KPVI until it was sold to PMCM TV, LLC in 2009. As a result of the sale to Sunbelt, the station moved in the mid-1990s from a smaller downtown facility to a newly remodeled facility on East Sherman Street.
Saturday Night Live star
Molly Shannon was the guest of honor at the official grand opening of the facility. Intermountain West Communications Company reached a deal to sell KPVI and KXTF to Idaho Broadcast Partners in June 2013; Idaho Broadcast Partners is a subsidiary of Frontier Radio Management. The sale was completed on May 13, 2014. On January 29, 2016, Frontier Radio Management sold Idaho Broadcast Partners to NBI Holdings, LLC, which owns
Northwest Broadcasting. The sale was completed on March 24. In February 2019,
Reuters reported that
Apollo Global Management had agreed to acquire the entirety of Brian Brady's television portfolio, which it intended to merge with
Cox Media Group (which Apollo was acquiring at the same time), once the purchases were approved by the FCC. In March 2019 filings with the FCC, Apollo confirmed that its newly formed broadcasting group, Terrier Media, would acquire Northwest Broadcasting, with Brian Brady holding an unspecified minority interest in Terrier. In June 2019, it was announced that Terrier Media would instead operate as Cox Media Group, as Apollo had reached a deal to also acquire Cox's radio and advertising businesses. The transaction was completed on December 17. On March 29, 2022, Cox Media Group announced it would sell KPVI-DT and 17 other stations to
Imagicomm Communications, an affiliate of the parent company of the
INSP cable channel, for $488 million; the sale was completed on August 1.{{Cite news|url=https://www.tvtechnology.com/news/cox-media-group-insp-close-deal-for-sale-of-cox-tv-stations-to-imagicomm|title=Cox Media Group, INSP Close Deal for Sale of Cox TV Stations to Imagicomm ==News operation==