The station first signed on the air on August 24, 1985; it was founded by a
limited partnership known as Columbia-Kansas TV Ltd., which was restructured into Channel 24 Ltd. before it signed on. Originally operating as an
independent station, channel 24 was the first such station licensed to Kansas as well as the first commercial television station to sign on in the Wichita market since KARD-TV (channel 3, now
KSNW) debuted 30 years earlier in September 1955. The station became a charter affiliate of
Fox when the network launched on October 9, 1986. However, like most Fox stations early on, it continued to program as a
de facto independent for Fox's first eight years of existence. On April 3, 1988, KAAS-TV (channel 18) signed on in
Salina as a full-time
satellite of KSAS. The station later added repeaters in Western Kansas in 1995, with the launches of
low-power stations KSAS-LP (channel 29) in
Dodge City and KAAS-LP (channel 31) in
Garden City. Channel 24 Ltd. filed for bankruptcy in the late 1980s, and was eventually bought out by
Clear Channel Communications in August 1990. On June 27, 1997, Clear Channel Communications entered into a
local marketing agreement with
Goddard-based Three Feathers Communications, Inc. to form a new television station in
Hutchinson, Kansas. Initially bearing the name KAWJ, the construction permit of the station took the KSCC ("Kansas Clear Channel", channel 36, now known as
KMTW) call letters on October 9, 1998. An application was filled by Three Feathers on July 30, 1999, to sell the license of KSCC to
Viacom's
Paramount Stations Group, which was granted by the
FCC on October 1 the same year. The station officially signed on January 5, 2001, with the station first launching on
Cox Cable in August 2000, as a
UPN owned-and-operated station. KSCC's license assets would later be sold to
San Antonio-based Mercury Broadcasting Company prior to the station's official sign-on. In 1998, per the suggestion of then-program director Michael Hochman, KSAS changed its branding from "Fox 24" to "Fox Kansas", in order to help position KSAS and its satellites as a regional "network" along the lines of the other major stations in the market (such as the Kansas State Network, the
Kansas Broadcasting System, and the
KAKEland Television Network). Two years later, KBDK (channel 14, now KOCW) in
Hoisington was added as another full-power satellite to serve
Great Bend and
Hays. The Wichita–Hutchinson
market's four major network stations all require at least three full-power transmitters to cover the unusually large market, which covers over 70 counties stretching from the
Flint Hills to the
Colorado border (encompassing almost three-fourths of the state), making it the largest media market by number of counties in the United States. In 2005, KSAS became a crucial location in the search for and apprehension of infamous Wichita
serial killer Dennis Rader, known for decades as the anonymous
BTK Killer. Rader's last known communication with the
media and police was a padded envelope which arrived at KSAS' West Street studios (one of many stations in the Wichita market which Rader had contacted over the years) on February 16 of that year. Enclosed in the package was a purple, 1.44-
MB Memorex floppy disk; a letter; a photocopy of the cover of a 1989 novel about a serial killer (
Rules of Prey); and a gold-colored necklace with a large medallion. Police found
metadata embedded in a
Microsoft Word document on the disk that pointed to Wichita's Christ Lutheran Church and the document was marked as last modified by "Dennis". A search of the church website turned up Dennis Rader as president of the congregation council. On April 20, 2007, Clear Channel entered into an agreement to sell its television stations (including KSAS and its LMA with KMTW) to
Newport Television, a holding company owned by
private equity firm Providence Equity Partners; the deal closed on March 14, 2008. Longtime Wichita television broadcaster
Sandy DiPasquale, the group's president and
CEO, was part owner of
Smith Broadcasting, and was the last local owner of
CBS affiliate KWCH-TV from 1989 to 1994. DiPasquale moved Newport's headquarters to
Kansas City in 2008 from his longtime base in Wichita. On July 19, 2012, Newport Television announced the sale of KSAS-TV to the
Sinclair Broadcast Group as part of a group deal worth an estimated total of $1 billion involving the sale of 22 stations to Sinclair, the
Nexstar Broadcasting Group and the
Cox Media Group; the local marketing agreement with KMTW was included in the purchase. The transaction was finalized on December 3.
Addition of MyNetworkTV affiliation On September 15, 2021, it was announced that MyTV Wichita would move from KMTW 36.1 to KSAS-TV 24.2. The moves were completed on September 20, 2021, causing TBD to move to 36.4, where
Dabl was airing, and Dabl moved to 36.1. ==News operation==