After reaching a deal with the NBA's Oklahoma City Thunder to telecast select regular season games from Oklahoma City's first long-term major professional sports franchise in 2008, KSBI began branding as "Thunder TV" beginning that October, with the "KSBI 52" brand continuing to be used on a secondary basis. That year, the station also began construction on a new state-of-the-art studio facility on North Morgan Road (south of the John Kilpatrick Turnpike) in Yukon, which was completed in the spring of 2009; KSBI relocated its local programming production and various other operations to the new facility that September. That year, DirecTV began carrying KSBI's programming in the Tulsa area as an out-of-market station (the station was removed from the satellite provider in January 2012 following a carriage dispute between Family Broadcasting Group and DirecTV).