Early years The
KCOM Broadcasting Company applied on February 27, 1952, for a new television station on channel 4 in Sioux City. The application was made in anticipation of the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) lifting in the near future a years-long freeze on television station grants. Soon after, another group also filed for channel 4: Perkins Bros. Inc., the owners of Sioux City radio station
KSCJ and sister to the
Sioux City Journal newspaper. In September 1952, the FCC ordered hearings to be held on the competing applicants for channel 4. However, no hearings were held, as the commission worked through a large backlog of competing TV applications. Instead, in December 1953, KCOM and KSCJ combined their applications; the KCOM Broadcasting Company gave KSCJ an option to acquire half the company and agreed to sell off KCOM. The merger of the KCOM and KSCJ applications cleared the way for the FCC to grant a
construction permit on January 20, 1954. Tower construction began in May at a site in
Plymouth County, and KTIV affiliated with
NBC and
ABC. However, the company had yet to announce where its studios would be located. The station put out its first test pattern on September 23 and intended to be on air in time for the
1954 World Series, but officials could not establish a link between the studio and transmitter site to air the games, leaving Sioux City's other TV station—
KVTV (channel 9)—to air the Series. In order to get the signal past a tree that blocked the way, the height of the
microwave antenna had to be raised twice. KTIV went on the air on October 10, 1954, with programming from NBC, ABC, and the
DuMont Television Network; it had no local programming, as its studios at 10th and Grandview streets had not been completed. Shortly after signing on the air, KSCJ exercised the option to buy half of KTIV, which the FCC approved in March 1955. After the change in ownership, the station increased its effective radiated power to 100,000 watts, the maximum allowed on channel 4, improving reception in rural areas beyond Sioux City; the FCC granted this on May 13, 1955, and the increase took effect five days later. The DuMont network disappeared in September 1955; the station also briefly affiliated with the
NTA Film Network, which began in 1956. In 1961, KTIV hired
Tom Brokaw, a native of
Yankton, South Dakota. Brokaw earned $75 a week (equivalent to $783 in 2024) to be a staff announcer and part-time weatherman and newscaster. Brokaw worked at the station while enrolled at the
University of South Dakota. From KTIV, Brokaw went on to jobs in
Omaha and
Atlanta before joining
KNBC in Los Angeles in 1966, the first in a series of posts at NBC before later anchoring the
NBC Nightly News. Perkins Bros. acquired the remainder of the company from the former KCOM group in 1965, spending $2.2 million. Prior to then, Perkins Bros. had been a silent partner, and management duties belonged to Dietrich Dirks, who had founded KCOM. That December, after seven years of joint work and the withdrawal of an objection by
KQTV in
Fort Dodge, KTIV moved to a new tower near
Hinton, Iowa, that it co-owned with KVTV. KTIV then donated its previous tower to
South Dakota Educational Television, which reassembled the mast near
Beresford. The station continued to split ABC programs with KVTV until 1967, when KVTV became KCAU-TV and a full-time ABC affiliate, while new station
KMEG acquired the CBS affiliation.
Black Hawk Broadcasting and American Family ownership In November 1973, Perkins Bros. sold KTIV to Black Hawk Broadcasting, which owned television and radio stations in
Waterloo and in
Austin, Minnesota, for $2.5 million. Ground was broken in 1976 on a new studio facility within the Stonesthrow Office Complex, atop Sioux City's Signal Hill. KTIV began broadcasting from the new structure on June 5, 1977; it was the only studio in the area purpose-built for television and was fitted out with
electronic news gathering equipment. The facility also aided Black Hawk in its push to expand the station's staff; the station payroll grew from 32 employees in 1974 to 58 in 1978. Black Hawk Broadcasting merged into American Family Broadcasting, the broadcast division of insurer
American Family Corporation (today better known as Aflac), in a deal announced in 1979 and completed in 1980. In the deal, Black Hawk spun off all of its other broadcast stations except KTIV and
KWWL in Waterloo to meet FCC ownership limits.
Quincy and Gray ownership Quincy Newspapers Inc. acquired KTIV from American Family in 1989. Quincy owned no stations in Iowa, but it did own broadcast properties in Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, and West Virginia, three of which were NBC affiliates like KTIV. At the time, Sioux City was the smallest market in which American Family owned a TV station. To run KTIV, Quincy hired William F. Turner, who had been the general manager at KCAU-TV when Forward Communications owned it and worked in the corporate office of KCAU's then-owner,
Citadel Communications; Turner had a long-term friendship with the Oakley family, owners of Quincy Newspapers. On September 16, 2002, KTIV began broadcasting a digital signal on
UHF channel 41. The station continued dual analog and digital broadcasts until it shut down its analog signal on February 17, 2009, the original date for full-power stations to convert to digital service. KTIV continued to broadcast on channel 41, using
virtual channel 4, until it switched to channel 14 in 2018 as a result of the
2016 United States wireless spectrum auction. KTIV assumed ad sales responsibility in 2003 for "KXWB", the local
The WB 100+ Station Group station; KCAU-TV had been providing advertising and marketing services to the cable-only service when it launched in 1998. When
The WB merged with
UPN to form
The CW in 2006, KTIV obtained the affiliation and programmed the network on its second
subchannel. In 2021,
Gray Television purchased Quincy Media for $925 million. ==News operation==