Within weeks of each other in 1977, Central Texas Broadcasting Company, formed by Waco businessman Robert A. Mann, and Business Communications Inc. of
Fort Worth applied to the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for Waco's channel 25. Mann had been approached to be part of the Fort Worth-based group but found he would not own as much of the proposed station as he wished, so he mounted his own application. A third company, Heart O' Texas Broadcasting Company, applied in September, and on December 27, they were joined by Blake-Potash Corporation. The four applications were placed into
comparative hearing status by the FCC on December 4, 1979, and hearings concluded a year later. In November 1981, FCC administrative law judge Edward Kuhlmann issued an initial decision favoring Blake-Potash. However, the other three applicants lodged appeals with the commission's review board. Kuhlmann found all four applicants to be flawed in some form due to improprieties in their owners' business dealings. However, the review board's decision in July to overturn the initial finding and award Central Texas Broadcasting the permit was based on what it felt was an inaccurate assessment of claims regarding integration of ownership and management—the participation of shareholders in the operation of the proposed station. Kuhlmann had rejected the claims from Mann's group as unreasonable, but the review board found this decision unfounded. Blake-Potash appealed this decision to the full FCC, calling Mann an "artful dodger" and alleging he made conflicting claims about his companies to the FCC and the
Securities and Exchange Commission; Mann denied the claims. With the last appeals by Blake-Potash and Heart O' Texas still pending, Central Texas Broadcasting pressed forward. In July 1984, the firm announced that its proposed station would be known as KWVT; it would locate its studios at New Road and Bagby and its transmitter at
Moody; and that it would become an affiliate of
NBC when it signed on. At the time, the market was the largest in the U.S. without three network-affiliated TV stations for the
Big Three networks;
KCEN-TV (channel 6) had recently switched to full-time
ABC, and
KWTX-TV (channel 10) was the
CBS affiliate. By the time ground was formally broken on the studios in October, Mann had selected a different call sign: KXXV-TV, from the
Roman numeral for 25. Construction was delayed by weather issues; in the meantime, because of KCEN-TV's switch, NBC programs were unavailable in the Waco area for months. KXXV debuted on March 22, 1985. Six months after channel 25 signed on the air, NBC announced it would return to KCEN-TV, which had been its longtime affiliate in the market. At the time, NBC was ascendant in the national ratings, and it sought to improve its standing in much the same way ABC had in the late 1970s and early 1980s; KCEN-TV was among the first stations to switch to the network. Though channel 25's affiliation agreement with NBC ran through August 1986, KXXV came to an affiliation agreement with ABC and agreed with KCEN-TV to move the affiliation switch forward by eight months to December 30, 1985. In 1987, Central Texas Broadcasting filed to sell KXXV to
Shamrock Broadcasting for $12.5 million; the FCC granted approval of the transaction over an appeal from shareholders of Heart O' Texas, by now defunct, but the sale was not completed until the first week of 1988. Shamrock announced in 1990 that it intended to sell KXXV,
KTAB-TV in
Abilene, and three radio stations, but KXXV was not sold until 1994, when it was purchased by
Drewry Communications of
Lawton, Oklahoma; Drewry had previously expressed interest in buying channel 25. While Shamrock was selling in order to focus on larger-market broadcast properties, Drewry owned network affiliates in Texas and Oklahoma. Drewry took over on December 1, 1994; it dismissed five of the station's senior executives, including the general manager. In 1998, Drewry acquired K22DP, a low-power station in
Bryan, and relaunched it as KRHD-LP, a semi-satellite of KXXV with local advertising and the ability to insert local programming. KXXV/KRHD added a secondary affiliation with
The WB on January 11, 2002, following the sale of the market's previous WB affiliate,
KAKW (channel 62), to
Univision. KXXV/KRHD aired The WB's prime time lineup after ABC's late night programming, as well as two hours of
Kids' WB programming on Sunday mornings. In July 2002, KXXV/KRHD ceded the secondary WB affiliation to
Fox affiliate
KWKT (channel 44) and its Brazos Valley satellite
KYLE (channel 28), which would air the network's prime time programming in an earlier time slot but did not pick up Kids' WB. At the same time as channel 25 picked up The WB, it also became the local affiliate of
Telemundo, taking over the local channel on the
Time Warner Cable system and adding local news briefs and advertising. On November 29, 2004, a
Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk from nearby
Fort Hood clipped
guy wires of the KXXV tower near Moody; the helicopter then crashed, killing all seven aboard. The lights on the tower were not functioning as a result of recent storms; the station had duly warned the
Federal Aviation Administration about the light failure. Drewry had planned to sell its stations to London Broadcasting in 2008; however, by January 2009, the deal fell through, and London instead bought KCEN-TV. Another six years passed before Drewry sold its broadcasting portfolio to
Raycom Media for $160 million in 2015. Raycom announced a $3.6 billion merger into
Atlanta-based
Gray Television on June 25, 2018. Gray opted to retain KWTX-TV and
KBTX-TV in Bryan and sold KXXV–KRHD, as well as
WTXL-TV in
Tallahassee, Florida, to the
E. W. Scripps Company for $55 million. The sale was completed on January 2, 2019. One consequence of the sale was that KXXV lost the Telemundo affiliation to KWTX. ==News operation==