M. W. Cooper and his Mid West Broadcasting Corporation, also part-owned by Tulsa state senator Gene C. Howard and Gene Stipe, put KRMC on the air in April 1973.[4] A year later, the station changed formats and became one of the smallest-market all-news outlets in the country.[5] A daytime-only outlet on a Mexican clear channel, the station's news service utilized the resources of United Press International.[5] However, all-news was a financial failure losing $8,000 a month, prompting KRMC to change to gospel on October 13, 1975.[6] One of the reasons cited by station management for the change was that an all-news format did not work well on a daytime-only station.[6] Another was a change in operation; while not reflected in the records of the Federal Communications Commission, the Oklahoma City Counseling Center acquired the station in 1975.[4]
In the early 1980s, KRMC almost negotiated an agreement with Oscar Rose Junior College by which Rose broadcasting students would have operated the station.[7] However, this did not come to pass. The call letters were changed to the present KTLV on November 12, 1987, as the ownership renamed itself Twelve-Twenty Communications Corporation; the licensee name was changed to First Choice Broadcasting in 1992 as part of an internal reorganization.[8]
1220 kHz in Oklahoma City was almost shut down as part of a 2002 deal with Clear Channel Communications that would have seen KTLV's intellectual unit move to 1340 kHz and Clear Channel move KGYN to Oklahoma City from Guymon, Oklahoma.[9]