KETV first signed on the air on September 17, 1957; it was Omaha's third television station (behind WOW-TV, channel 6, now WOWT and KMTV, channel 3). The station has been an ABC affiliate from its debut (and the only one in Omaha that has never changed its affiliation); KETV is the second full-time ABC affiliate in the Omaha market; KOLN-TV in Lincoln previously served as Omaha's ABC affiliate for much of 1953 and 1954 until the Federal Communications Commission split off Lincoln into its own separate market from Omaha. Incidentally, until KLKN-TV signed on from Lincoln in 1996 (by then, KOLN had switched to CBS), KETV served as the default ABC affiliate for Nebraska's state capital; to this day, KETV still retains significant viewership in Lincoln, and the station operates a news bureau in the city. Channel 7 was originally owned by the World Publishing Company, publisher of the "Omaha World-Herald". It associated itself with the newspaper early on, branding itself as "Omaha World-Herald Television."