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, NBC affiliate KYTV aired Sesame Street at 9:00 a.m. during the week. After securing a license from the Federal Communications Commission 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, eventually expanding to a 24-hour operation with 25 employees. The station borrowed transmitter space from Springfield CBS affiliate KOLR. 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, KTWU-TV, or via KOZK. 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 ; 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, 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, were 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. 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.
On June 12, 2009, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television, Ozarks Public Television shut down the analog transmitters of its two stations. Listed below are the post-transition channel allocations for each analog transmitter:
KOZK shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 21, on June 12. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 23; through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 21.
KOZJ shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 26, on June 12. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 25; through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 26.
As a part of the broadcast frequency repacking process following the 2016–2017 FCC incentive auction, KOZK was to relocate its digital signal to UHF channel 23 to UHF 16 by the November 30, 2018 deadline for the first group of television stations designated for repacking to shift to new digital allocations; KOZJ was to relocate its digital signal from UHF channel 25 to UHF 35 by the April 12, 2019 deadline for the second group of stations eligible for repacking to re-allocate. Using PSIP, KOZK continues to display its virtual channel number as 21, while KOZJ continues to display its virtual channel as 26. As of September 1, 2018, KOZJ relocated to UHF channel 35. KOZK relocated to UHF channel 16 on September 17 in coordination with KYTV.
