The station first signed on the air in August 1979 as KCIK-TV (standing for "Christ Is King"). It originally operated as a nonprofit Christian-oriented religious independent station, and was the first UHF television station to sign on in the El Paso market. It was also the first new commercial station to sign on in El Paso since KVIA-TV hit the airwaves 23 years earlier. Although El Paso itself had over 400,000 people at the time channel 14 signed on, the El Paso market has always been a small to medium-sized market because the surrounding urban and rural areas, then as now, are not much larger than the city itself.