Fiktiv USA - WBZ-TV

WBZ-TV, virtual channel 4 (UHF digital channel 20), is a CBS-owned-and-operated television station licensed to Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The station is owned by the CBS Television Stations subsidiary of ViacomCBS, as part of a duopoly with MyNetworkTV affiliate WSBK-TV (channel 38). The two stations share studios on Soldiers Field Road in the Allston–Brighton section of Boston; WBZ-TV's transmitter is located on Cedar Street in Needham, Massachusetts, on a tower site that was formerly owned by CBS and is now owned by American Tower Corporation (which is shared with transmitters belonging to sister station WSBK as well as WCVB-TV, WBTS-CD and WGBX-TV).

As the only television station that was built from the ground up by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, WBZ-TV began operations on June 9, 1948, at 6:15 p.m. with a news broadcast hosted by Arch MacDonald. The station was from its inception associated with the NBC television network, owing to WBZ radio (1030 AM)'s longtime affiliation with the NBC Red Network. At its sign-on, WBZ-TV became the first commercial television station to begin operations in the New England region. The station originally operated from inside the Hotel Bradford alongside its radio sister; its current home was not completed at the time, although master control and its self-supporting tower over the building were in use at sign-on. The WBZ stations would not move into what was then known as the Westinghouse Broadcasting Center until June 17, 1948, when the building was opened.

The station was knocked off the air on August 31, 1954, when Hurricane Carol destroyed its transmitter tower. A temporary transmitter was installed using a short, makeshift tower at the studio site and later on the original tower of WEEI-FM (now WBGB) in Malden. In 1957, WBZ-TV began broadcasting from a 1,200-foot (366 m) tower in Needham, along with WBZ-FM at 106.7 FM (now WMJX). The tower site is now known as the CBS Digital Television Broadcasting Facility, and is used by several Boston-area television stations, including WGBH-TV (channel 2) and WCVB-TV (channel 5).

Channel 4 was in danger of losing its NBC affiliation when Westinghouse balked at NBC's initial offer to trade sister stations KYW radio and WPTZ television (now KYW-TV) in Philadelphia in exchange for WTAM-AM-FM and WNBK television (now WKYC-TV) in Cleveland. In response, NBC threatened to pull its programming from both WBZ-TV and WPTZ unless Westinghouse agreed to the trade. The swap was made in February 1956, but Westinghouse immediately complained to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the U.S. Department of Justice about NBC's extortion. The threat reemerged in 1960 after NBC announced it would swap the Philadelphia stations in exchange for a competing Boston outlet, then-CBS affiliate WNAC-TV (channel 7) and its sister radio stations, from RKO General. Approval of the RKO-NBC deal would have potentially made WBZ-TV an ABC affiliate, completing a three-way swap of network affiliations in Boston. However, in 1964, the FCC nullified the NBC-RKO trade and ordered the NBC-Westinghouse swap reversed without NBC realizing any profit on the deal. WBZ-TV retained its NBC affiliation as a result of the canceled sale.

WBZ-TV (sometimes informally referred to as "BZ" both on- and off-air) was a pioneer in Boston television. In 1948, it began live broadcasts of Boston's two Major League Baseball teams, the Red Sox and the Braves, broadcasts that at first were split with WNAC-TV. It was also the first Boston station to have daily newscasts, starting with the station's very first night on the air. On October 12, 1957, WBZ-TV broadcast a half-hour special program on Sputnik 1, featuring a motion picture of the final stage of its rocket crossing the pre-dawn sky of Baltimore, shot by sister station WJZ-TV.

In 1994, sister station WJZ-TV in Baltimore lost its affiliation with ABC after that network announced a deal with the E. W. Scripps Company to switch three of Scripps' television stations—including its Baltimore outlet, WMAR-TV—to ABC as a condition of retaining its network affiliations with WEWS-TV in Cleveland and WXYZ-TV in Detroit; CBS intended to affiliate with those two stations, as it was about to lose its longtime affiliates in Cleveland and Detroit to Fox due to a deal with New World Communications. Westinghouse felt betrayed by ABC's decision, and as a safeguard began shopping for affiliation deals for the entire Group W television unit. Group W eventually struck an agreement to switch WBZ-TV, KYW-TV and WJZ-TV to CBS (Westinghouse's two other stations, KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh and KPIX in San Francisco were already CBS affiliates). The Boston market's third network affiliation switch took place on January 2, 1995. After a 47-year relationship with NBC, channel 4 became the third station in Boston to align with CBS. The network had originally affiliated with WNAC-TV in 1948, then moved to channel 5 (the original WHDH-TV) in 1961; it then returned to WNAC-TV (predecessor to the current WHDH) in 1972 and remained on channel 7 until the switch.

When Westinghouse merged with CBS outright on November 24, 1995, WBZ-TV became a CBS-owned-and-operated station (and has remained so ever since). As a condition of the merger, CBS had to sell WPRI-TV (channel 12) in Providence, Rhode Island, which was acquired by CBS earlier that year. Channel 4 provides at least grade B signal coverage to all of Rhode Island, and city-grade coverage within Providence itself as well as Fall River and New Bedford. At the time, the FCC normally did not allow common ownership of two stations with overlapping signals, and would not even consider a waiver for stations with overlapping city-grade signals. In 1996, WBZ-TV became the first former Group W television station to drop the classic Group W font.

After the 2000 acquisition of CBS by its former subsidiary, Viacom, which effectively made the station locally owned because Viacom's parent National Amusements is based in the suburbs of Boston, WBZ-TV's operations were merged with that of Boston's UPN affiliate, WSBK-TV; concurrently, WBZ-TV also took over the operations of WLWC, the UPN affiliate in nearby Providence, which had been run out of WSBK-TV. Today, the operations of WBZ-TV and WSBK-TV are co-located at WBZ's studios in Brighton. WLWC was sold in 2006 to the Four Points Media Group, a holding company owned by private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management; it, along with the other Four Points stations, has since been acquired by Sinclair Broadcast Group (WLWC would subsequently be sold to OTA Broadcasting and Ion Media).

On February 2, 2017, CBS agreed to sell CBS Radio to Entercom, then the fourth-largest radio broadcaster in the United States, the sale was conducted using a Reverse Morris Trust so that it would be tax-free. While CBS shareholders retained a 72% ownership stake in the combined company, Entercom was the surviving entity, separating WBZ (AM) and its sister radio stations from WBZ-TV. The sale was completed on November 17, 2017, under the terms of a settlement with the Justice Department, WBZ (AM) was then divested to iHeartMedia.

As a CBS O&O, WBZ-TV airs the entire CBS schedule with no preemptions except for extended breaking news coverage, as per Westinghouse's original agreement with CBS. Syndicated programs currently airing on WBZ-TV include Dr. Phil, The Drew Barrymore Show, Judge Judy and Entertainment Tonight. All of the syndicated programming that WBZ-TV currently offers is distributed by corporate cousin CBS Media Ventures.

Since 2003, WBZ has produced coverage of the Boston Pops Orchestra's annual Fourth of July concert at the Hatch Memorial Shell. In the event's first decade on the station, the 10:00 p.m. ET hour of the show was broadcast nationally by CBS – featuring the Pops' signature performances of the 1812 Overture and "Stars and Stripes Forever," as well as the fireworks over the Charles River. Live coverage of the event was broadcast in high-definition for the first time beginning in 2007.

CBS ended its national broadcast of the event following the 2012 concert; Boston Pops executive producer David G. Mugar believed CBS had chosen to discontinue the national broadcast due to poor ratings, due primarily to NBC counterprogramming the Boston Pops' live broadcast with an encore broadcast of its competing Fourth of July special from New York City. In 2016 (which also marked Mugar's retirement), CBS resumed network coverage of the concert, airing the final two hours, with the entire concert continuing to air locally on WBZ.

WBZ-TV has aired local sporting events over the years, that have originated either in-house, or through NBC or CBS. Besides the Braves (from 1948 until the team moved to Milwaukee before the 1953 season) and the Red Sox (1948–1957, 1972–1974, and a handful of games in 2003 and 2004, along with certain games aired nationally on NBC from 1948 to 1989), WBZ-TV also broadcast the Boston Celtics from 1972 to 1985 (and again from 1990 to 1994 through NBC's broadcast contract with the NBA). In 1981, WBZ-TV was the first Boston television station to broadcast live wire-to-wire coverage of the Boston Marathon; the station has done so every year since, and has been the only Boston station to do so since 2007 (WCVB-TV and WHDH-TV also carried the race in its entirety during much of the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s).

The station has long been associated with the New England Patriots of the National Football League, an association that began in 1965 after NBC's acquisition of rights to the American Football League, of which the Patriots were a part of then. After WBZ's switch to CBS, Patriots regular season games would not air on the station again until 1998, when CBS acquired the television rights to the NFL's present AFC. Since then, the majority of Patriots regular season games have aired on WBZ, and in 2009, the station became the Patriots' "official" station, gaining rights to preseason games and airing the weekly program Patriots All-Access. Three of the Patriots' Super Bowl appearances—XX, XXXVIII and LIII—were televised by WBZ.

In the early 1960s, WBZ unveiled a new stylized "4" logo, using a distinctive font that had been designed especially for Group W. The logo became italicized in the late 1980s, but remained the same font. It kept this logo for over 30 years until it unveiled its first "News 4 New England" logo in September 1996, a year and a half after the switch from NBC to CBS. The old logo was the longest-used numeric logo in New England television history until WCVB's stylized "5" crossed the 31-year mark in 2003.

The "Circle 4" logo that replaced the original "News 4" logo in 1998 was often referred to on-air by WBZ sports anchor Bob Lobel as "The Circle 4 Ranch". In 2004, WBZ began using CBS's standardized branding, becoming "CBS 4". In 2007, it reverted to being known as just "WBZ-TV 4".

WBZ-TV presently broadcasts 36½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 5½ hours each weekday; 4 hours on Saturdays; and 5 hours on Sundays). WBZ operates a Bell LongRanger 206LIV helicopter for newsgathering called "Sky Eye". In addition to its main studios, the station operates two other news bureaus. The "Worcester Bureau" is located in the Worcester Plaza office tower at 440–446 Main Street in that city. The "New Hampshire Bureau" is located on Elm Street in Manchester. The station's weather radar known as "WBZ Doppler Live" is located at Worcester Regional Airport. Along with other CBS-owned stations, WBZ offers a web-only "@ Your Desk" newscast available live and on-demand. WBZ-TV also produces an additional 18½ hours of newscasts weekly (with 3½ hours each weekday and a half-hour each on Saturdays and Sundays) for sister station WSBK.

Although the station tends to rank #1 in daytime and primetime ratings, Channel 4's local news ratings have suffered since the switch in network affiliations. This is partly because at the time of the switch, CBS was well behind NBC in the network ratings. Taken as a whole, its local newscasts are the lowest rated of Boston's "Big 3" affiliates, having dipped behind a resurgent WHDH-TV as well.

In the mid-1960s, it adopted the Eyewitness News format that had been pioneered at Philadelphia sister station KYW-TV. WBZ was the first Boston station to have a regularly-scheduled late afternoon news program. In the 1970s, the station aired First 4 News at 5:30 p.m., anchored initially by Jack Williams and Pat Mitchell, then by Gail Harris. On July 21, 1979, a new format premiered in this time slot, Live on 4, a more informal program mixing elements of a daytime talk show with those of a traditional newscast, went on to become a trendsetter in the Boston market in the 1980s. First anchored by Gail Harris and Chris Marrou, it later had hosting assumed by many other WBZ staff members, including entertainment reporter Joyce Kulhawik and news anchor Chris Conangla in the mid-1980s. Live on 4 gave a loose preview of the news to be covered more in depth at 6:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. with featuring stories on lifestyle, health and entertainment topics, along with live, in-studio guests.

At one point, WCVB considered launching a competing program that was similarly structured (to be anchored by Peter Mehegan and Mary Richardson, who later became the long-running anchor team on Chronicle), but it was WNEV who made three attempts at a Live on 4-inspired show. First, it premiered the two-hour live talk/magazine show Look in the fall of 1982 (renamed New England Afternoon in its second and final year), it failed in the Nielsen ratings and was canceled in 1984. Three years later, WNEV tried the even more news-oriented copy New England News: Live at Five, which essentially became Boston's first proper 5:00 p.m. newscast, although it still featured the informal structure of Live on 4. Although this competitor to Live on 4 drew high ratings, the format ended after only a year, due to the departure of its creator, anchor Dave Wright. From 1988 to 1991, WNEV (which became WHDH-TV in 1990) ran a 5:00 p.m. newscast with a regular hard-news format.

In the early 1980s, WBZ-TV lost its longtime spot as Boston's highest-rated news station to WCVB, but even then placed a strong second for more than a decade. Its evening news team—consisting of anchors Jack Williams and Liz Walker, meteorologist Bruce Schwoegler, and sportscaster Bob Lobel—was the longest-running news team in New England from 1981 until Walker moved to the noon newscasts in 2000. Other personalities who came to channel 4 during this time were political reporter John Henning and Kulhawik. Williams remained at WBZ until his retirement in June 2015, Walker gave up anchoring duties in 2005 and hosted a Sunday morning talk show for several years before leaving the station in October 2008.

With syndicated news and tabloid programming becoming more the norm in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Live on 4, like Evening Magazine, was starting to become of lesser importance to Group W. In 1991, after a 12-year-run, Live on 4 was dropped after WBZ-TV acquired A Current Affair for the 5:30 p.m. time slot (the program previously aired on WFXT). WBZ launched a 5:00 p.m. newscast at that time. When ACA moved to WCVB's late night schedule in the fall of 1993 (later moving to WHDH's daytime lineup in 1994), WBZ switched their late afternoon newscast to 5:30 p.m., and began airing the freshman syndicated series American Journal (with WBZ alumnus Nancy Glass as anchor) at its 5:00 p.m. lead-in. American Journal would itself move to WCVB starting in its second season.

During the 1994–95 season, WBZ dropped late afternoon news altogether, airing The Maury Povich Show at 5:00 instead. By the summer of 1995, the station's news had fallen to third place for the very first time, thanks in part to WHDH and WCVB's full-hour 5:00 p.m. news accounting for their ratings dominance. In response, WBZ began airing two hours of news between 5:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. that fall. The two-hour 5:00 p.m. news remained originally until June 2004, when WBZ launched a 4:00 p.m. newscast for the first time (to complete with WHDH's newscast in the same timeslot). The 4:00 p.m. newscast was an hour long; the 5:00 p.m. hour was then given to Dr. Phil, a scheduling prompted by a contractual prohibition on scheduling Dr. Phil directly against The Oprah Winfrey Show, as well as the success of a similar move by Philadelphia sister station KYW-TV.

Channel 4 has changed its news and station branding continuously since the affiliation switch, after having changed from its longstanding brand of Eyewitness News to WBZ News 4 in 1993 (prior to the switch), the newscasts were rebranded to News 4 New England in 1996 and WBZ 4 News in 2000. On February 1, 2004, WBZ rebranded itself as "CBS 4", the move was officially made in an attempt to alleviate lingering confusion from the 1995 affiliation swap, though the branding brought the station in line with other CBS-owned stations. The "CBS 4" branding was phased out during the first quarter of 2007 and in February 2007, the station's newscast title was reverted from CBS 4 News to WBZ News 4. The rebranding was completed on February 4, 2007, during the station's coverage of the Super Bowl. This made WBZ-TV the first station owned by CBS to depart from CBS' standardization, and one of a handful of CBS-owned stations to brand with its call letters rather than the CBS name. General manager Ed Piette told The Boston Globe that he decided to ditch the "CBS 4" branding when he arrived in Boston for his first day of work and a cabbie asked him, "Whatever happened to WBZ?" The move was done in the hopes of re-emphasizing WBZ-TV's local identity and trading on the call letters' then eight-decade history in Boston—a strategy that worked well when Piette was general manager at Minneapolis–Saint Paul sister station WCCO-TV.

In January 2006, attempting to bolster its local news ratings, WBZ reinstated its 5:00 p.m. news (with Dr. Phil moving back to 3:00 p.m.) as part of a "mega-block" of news, and dismissed its former lead anchor Josh Binswanger, leading to the return of longtime anchor Jack Williams to the evening newscasts. In addition, Ed Carroll's contract was not renewed and in October 2005 the station hired Ken Barlow from KARE in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to replace him as chief meteorologist. The 4:00 p.m. newscast was discontinued later in 2006.

In late August 2006, WBZ-TV hired anchor Chris May from WHDH-TV, pairing him with Sara Underwood as anchors of the station's weekday 5:00 p.m. newscast. May then moved to Philadelphia sister station KYW-TV, where he was the lead co-anchor of Eyewitness News until he was fired from KYW on June 30, 2015. Underwood's contract with the station was not renewed and she left the station on March 4, 2008. In January 2007, the station launched Project Mass, a commitment to cover the community's top concerns in government, transit, healthcare, education, finance and the environment. The initiative kicked off with an online town meeting. WBZ's on-air staff continued to change in late 2007, when longtime morning anchor Scott Wahle was reassigned and replaced by former WFXT anchor David Wade. In January 2008, longtime morning and midday meteorologist Barry Burbank was reassigned to the weekend programs. He was replaced by meteorologist Todd Gutner. On February 29, 2008, it was reported that the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America strike caused a significant loss in viewers during the late news. WBZ-TV finished with an average of 157,800 total viewers, down from 177,800 viewers in 2007.

On September 15, 2008, the station was in the process of upgrading its news set for high definition broadcasts. During that time, all newscasts originated from the on-air area of the newsroom. The renovations lasted for at least six weeks. On December 11, 2008, WBZ and sister station WSBK-TV respectively became the fourth and fifth stations in the Boston market (behind WCVB, WHDH and WLVI) to begin broadcasting its newscasts in high definition. On May 19, 2009, WBZ/WSBK and Fox-owned WFXT entered into a Local News Service agreement that allows the stations to share local news video, along with a helicopter for traffic reports and breaking news. The helicopter originally used as part of the sharing agreement (which WFXT and WBZ/WSBK stopped using in 2013) was later involved in a crash that killed two people in Seattle on March 18, 2014, while on loan by Helicopters, Inc. for use by KOMO-TV during technical upgrades to that station's own helicopter.

On December 12, 2011, WBZ debuted a new news set, replacing one that had been used for nearly a decade, it features LED lighting, a dedicated weather area, and 16 high definition monitors. The new look, plus a greater emphasis on "hard news" coverage, are changes which the station believed would help regain viewership it had lost to rival station WCVB. Susan Walker, a broadcast professor at the Boston University, criticized the station's concurrent adoption of a standard graphics and branding scheme similar to its sister stations, which she believed put too much emphasis on WBZ being a CBS station, rather than branding itself as a local station.

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WSBK-TV, virtual channel 38 (UHF digital channel 21), is a MyNetworkTV-affiliated television station licensed to Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The station is owned by the CBS Television Stations subsidiary of ViacomCBS, as part of a duopoly with CBS owned-and-operated station WBZ-TV (channel 4). The two stations share studios on Soldiers Field Road in the Allston–Brighton section of Boston; WSBK-TV's transmitter is located on Cedar Street in Needham, Massachusetts, on a tower site that was formerly owned by CBS and is now owned by American Tower Corporation (which is shared with transmitters belonging to WBZ-TV, WCVB-TV, WGBH-TV, WBTS-CD, and WGBX-TV).

WSBK is also available via satellite throughout the United States on Dish Network as part of its superstation package (which since September 2013, is available only to existing subscribers of the tier). Otherwise, it enjoys cable coverage throughout much of the New England region, though this has been limited compared to the past when it was more widely distributed. There is no separate website for WSBK-TV; instead, it is integrated with that of sister station WBZ-TV.

WSBK is one of two ViacomCBS-owned stations carrying the News Corp-owned MyNetworkTV programming service, alongside sister station WBFS-TV in Miami.

The first construction permit for channel 38 in Boston was granted in October 1955 to Ajax Enterprises, headed by Herbert Mayer, a former New York City attorney who had founded Empire Coil, a New Rochelle, New York manufacturer of RF coils for television stations and receivers. Mayer went on to own stations in Portland, Oregon (KPTV, the country's first licensed UHF station) and Cleveland (WXEL). He sold the cable manufacturer and both television stations to Storer Broadcasting in 1954. Channel 38 was originally slated to have the WHMB call sign; however, after Storer changed the call letters of the Cleveland property to WJW-TV in April 1956, Mayer quickly reclaimed the WXEL call letters for the Boston station. WXEL's proposed transmitter in Melrose was never built, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) revoked the construction permit and deleted the call letters in November 1960.

The current station signed on the air on October 12, 1964. It was first licensed to the Boston Catholic Television Center under the call letters WIHS-TV, with the call letters standing for the "IHS" initialism for the Christogram. The station employed a general entertainment format, along with broadcasts of the daily and Sunday Mass. As WIHS, the station initially programmed a "hybrid" schedule—educational (for the Catholic schools in the Boston area) and religious programs during the morning, and syndicated programs and movies (and by 1966, some shows that the Boston area's network affiliates declined to air) in the afternoon and evening. The station also carried two 15-minute local newscasts each weekday, at 5:45 and 10 p.m., which consisted of an announcer reading news headlines into a camera.

The station also made an initial foray into sports, carrying ten regular season away games and all playoff road games from the Boston Celtics that were not carried on network television during the 1964-65 season. However, team management was worried about the lack of penetration of the UHF band, leading to playoff away games being simulcast on WHDH-TV (channel 5) in 1965 (that station had previously aired select Celtics telecasts, including playoff away games starting in 1962); the following season, the team moved back to WHDH outright. Some college sports (mostly hockey and basketball games) were carried during the WIHS era, which were carried over during the early Storer Broadcasting years.

The station was purchased by Storer Broadcasting in 1966. A few months after the purchase, the station's call letters were changed to the present WSBK-TV, named after the company's ticker symbol on the New York Stock Exchange, SBK. Storer scored its biggest coup in 1967, when it secured broadcast rights to the Boston Bruins from WKBG-TV (channel 56, now WLVI), and eventually owned the team for a three-year period from 1972 to 1975. During the next few years, as the Bruins became a contender for the National Hockey League's Stanley Cup championship, the popularity of these games led to a spike in UHF antenna purchases, and helped make channel 38 one of the leading independent stations in the country. For much of the time between 1970 and 1984, WSBK would televise between 70 and 72 of the Bruins' 80 regular season games, as well as all playoff games not shown on network television.

In 1975, WSBK acquired television rights to the Boston Red Sox; during the team's first year on WSBK, the Red Sox won the American League pennant. The team remained on WSBK until 1995, and returned for another three-year period from 2003 to 2005. WSBK had broadcast between 90 and 110 Red Sox games a year between 1975 and 1983; about 75 games a year from 1984 to 1995, and a limited number of games (usually 28 to 30 a year) between 2003 and 2005. Although WSBK carried Celtics road playoff games in 1969 (the team having abandoned WKBG at the end of the regular season after seeing the number of regular-season games broadcast by WKBG during the 1968-69 season shrink compared to the previous year), the station would not carry the NBA team's games on a regular basis until 1993. During that time, WSBK broadcast road games of the Celtics; it continued to do so through 1998.

In addition to an increasingly stronger lineup of syndicated programs—which during the late 1960s through (to a lesser extent) the 1990s included cartoons (such as Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies shorts and made-for-TV Popeye cartoons) and sitcoms (such as The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Cheers (itself set in Boston and now owned by CBS), M*A*S*H and Frasier), WSBK continued to run some network programs that were preempted by the local NBC (WBZ-TV), ABC (first WNAC-TV, then WCVB-TV), and CBS (first WHDH-TV, then WNAC-TV/WNEV-TV) affiliates until 1981. The station also ran several movies a day (one during the day, prime time, and late night). During the 1970s through the mid-1980s, WSBK's cartoon programs were hosted by Willie Whistle, a clown who used a bird-whistle in his mouth to create a distinctive voice he was recognized for.

WSBK's popularity was such that by the mid-1970s, it was available on nearly every cable provider in New England and as far west as Buffalo, New York and as far south as Long Island. In the late 1980s, WSBK became a national superstation when it entered into an agreement with Eastern Microwave to distribute its signal outside of New England. Eastern Microwave also distributed the signal of existing superstation WOR-TV in New York City. WSBK's main selling point was its coverage of the Red Sox, similar to how WOR-TV, WGN-TV in Chicago, and WTBS in Atlanta respectively used their coverage of the New York Mets, Chicago Cubs. and Atlanta Braves. WSBK's carriage did not reach the same level as the other stations, but covered large portions of New York, and a handful of cable providers in Florida (which produced the unusual circumstance of Red Sox games being regularly broadcast into part of the New York Yankees' main market, (like WPIX in the Boston area which carried the Yankees). WSBK's coverage of the Boston Bruins also made it a favorite superstation on Canadian cable providers, along with WOR (at the time, WOR was televising away games of all three New York-area NHL teams, the New York Islanders, the New York Rangers and the New Jersey Devils).

When the FCC's syndication exclusivity rules (or "Syndex") were strengthened in the early 1990s, distribution of all out-of-market station signals were hampered. The rule protected stations in local markets from out-of-market competition by superstations that aired identical syndicated programming. Any station could file with cable providers for "protection" and the provider would have to black out the offending station for periods of time. The management of this "blocking" would prove so cumbersome that many cable providers began dropping distant signals such as WSBK and effectively stopped most superstation distribution. Distributors such as Eastern Microwave attempted to make it easier for cable providers by substituting shows that could not be blocked, but the damage had already been done by then.

WSBK began operating on a 24-hour schedule in the late 1970s, only to revert to late-night signoffs by the early 1980s. Besides its status as a sports powerhouse, WSBK made a name for itself when it created The Movie Loft, one of the first "hosted movie" franchises on television, long before it became a staple on cable. The program aired syndicated movies with interstitial program elements hosted by Dana Hersey. Part of the program's marketing was that it aired only "unedited" movies. The Movie Loft tested that on several occasions airing movies such as The Deer Hunter, The Boys in the Band and 48 Hrs. without editing for inappropriate content or length. In the mid-1980s, WSBK dropped the midday movie to make room for more sitcoms. For a few years, WSBK signed off at 1:00 a.m. or 2:00 a.m., but began operating 24 hours a day by the end of the decade.

Kohlberg Kravis Roberts bought WSBK and most of Storer's other stations in 1985. At this time, ownership was officially under the KKR subsidiary of New Boston Television, although Storer was still referenced on-air as being the parent company of WSBK. KKR later sold most of its stations to Gillett Communications. When Gillett defaulted on some of the financing agreements in the early 1990s, the ownership was restructured and the company was renamed SCI Television. Eventually, SCI ran into fiscal issues, and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1993. As a result, WSBK was sold in a group deal to New World Communications that year.

In 1994, New World made a landmark deal with Fox to switch most of its CBS-, ABC-, and NBC-affiliated stations to Fox. WSBK remained an independent station and was eventually put up for sale again to protect existing affiliate WFXT (channel 25), which Fox would acquire soon afterward (WSBK would not have been beneficial to Fox, as it was a UHF station—the New World stations that switched to Fox had broadcast on VHF channels between 2 and 13—and did not have a news department unlike its sister stations). Channel 38 was then sold to the Paramount Stations Group (which would become a subsidiary of Viacom that same year) and became a charter affiliate of UPN on January 16, 1995; that June, the longtime "TV 38" branding was retired and changed to "UPN 38". In 1996, Viacom acquired a 50% ownership stake in the network, which effectively made WSBK-TV a UPN owned-and-operated station.

Originally, WSBK continued to essentially program under the conventions of an independent station as UPN would not run five nights a week of programming until 1998. While the affiliation did not result in immediate changes to the rest of its lineup outside of primetime, WSBK began incorporating more talk and reality shows by 1997, with older shows being gradually phased out. The Movie Loft was discontinued as a result of host Dana Hersey's retirement, as well as declining ratings for the program as the movie packages that the station acquired were of a lesser quality than in previous years. WSBK later revived the genre with The UPN 38 Movie House, hosted by actor and comedian Brian Frates and Movie Night (co-hosted by Dan and Dave Andelman); in the early 2000s, it also attempted a revival of The Movie Loft hosted by Skip Kelly. The station also began to decrease its telecasts of local professional sports events. For some time after affiliating with UPN, WSBK continued to air primarily cartoons and classic sitcoms. In late 1999, WSBK was lowered to only a morning cartoon block, a major amount of talk and reality shows during the midday and afternoon hours, and more recent sitcoms in the evening along with UPN shows. The station stopped carrying cartoons in 2003, around the same time that UPN discontinued the Disney's One Too block. By 2002, the station was running a blend of talk shows, court shows, and reality shows from 9:00 a.m. through the late afternoon, with recent off-network sitcoms continuing in the evenings. Movies were also cut back, and were generally relegated to weekends only. However, one tradition that remained on WSBK was the Sunday morning run of The Three Stooges.

In 2001, after Viacom merged with the previous CBS Corporation—which created a duopoly with WBZ-TV, WSBK integrated its operations into WBZ's facility in Brighton. The former WSBK studio facility is now occupied by four Boston radio stations that, until 2017, were owned by former corporate sibling CBS Radio. Under CBS, WSBK began sharing some first-run syndicated programs with WBZ-TV.

On January 24, 2006, CBS Corporation (which spun off from Viacom two months earlier) and the Warner Bros. unit of Time Warner announced that the two companies would shut down The WB and UPN and combine the networks' respective programming to create a new "fifth" network called The CW. Even though WSBK is owned by The CW's part-owner CBS, then-WB affiliate WLVI—owned at the time by Tribune Broadcasting (which sold that station to WHDH owner Sunbeam Television that September)—was announced as The CW's Boston outlet through an affiliation agreement that signed 16 of Tribune's 19 WB stations as charter affiliates. It would not have been an upset if WSBK had been chosen as Boston's CW affiliate, as representatives for The CW had been on record as preferring the "strongest" WB and UPN affiliates, and Boston was one of the few markets where the WB and UPN affiliates both had relatively strong viewership.

On February 22, 2006, News Corporation announced the launch of MyNetworkTV, another new broadcast television network to be operated by its Fox Television Stations and Twentieth Television divisions. WSBK was considered the favorite to become the network's Boston affiliate, but CBS Television Stations announced that May, that channel 38, along with WBFS-TV in Miami, would instead become independent stations. Although WBFS ultimately signed with MyNetworkTV, the MyNetworkTV affiliation in the Boston market eventually went to Derry, New Hampshire-based independent station WZMY-TV (channel 50, now WWJE-DT).

WSBK-TV officially reverted to the "TV 38" branding on September 6, 2006, and also revived its former Entertaining Boston slogan; the station continued to carry UPN programming until the network shut down on September 15. After the station reverted to independent status, WSBK's primetime lineup was filled by first-run syndicated programs (initially a second run of Dr. Phil at 8:00 p.m., The Insider at 9:00 p.m. and a second run of Entertainment Tonight at 9:30 p.m.) The station adopted a new ad campaign entitled Hello in September 2009, where the majority of station promotion is centered around the word "hello"; this new campaign also brought forth a mascot called the TV 38 Blockhead.

On June 15, 2011, WBIN-TV (the former WZMY-TV) announced that it would end its affiliation with MyNetworkTV that September to become an independent station. CBS Television Stations subsequently signed an affiliation agreement with the programming service five days later on June 20, 2011 to move its Boston area affiliation to WSBK. It is believed that CBS' initial decision to deny its larger UPN stations affiliation agreements with MyNetworkTV was in retaliation against Fox for refusing to affiliate any of its UPN affiliates in markets where CBS Corporation or Tribune did not already sign deals to carry The CW with that network. WSBK affiliated with MyNetworkTV on September 19, 2011 (joining Miami sister station WBFS-TV as one of two CBS-owned stations to maintain an affiliation with the service). The station's branding was amended to "myTV38", in accordance to the new affiliation.

Syndicated programming on WSBK includes classic sitcoms which were aired during the 1990s and 2000s, and stable series as The People's Court, Judge Judy, Divorce Court, Judge Mathis, 2 Broke Girls, and Blue Bloods. The station's E/I programming is fulfilled through the syndicated Litton Entertainment Go Time block. WSBK also occasionally takes on the responsibility of airing CBS network programming whenever WBZ-TV runs extended breaking news coverage or special programming. Examples of this practice include during the Boston Marathon, and more recently in 2009, during New England Patriots pre-season games as well as the passing of Senator Ted Kennedy and his sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver.

In terms of sports, WSBK was the longtime television home of the Boston Red Sox and Boston Bruins. WSBK became the Red Sox's over-air flagship station in 1975 and remained so for 20 years, until it lost the broadcast rights to WABU (channel 68, now WBPX-TV) in 1996. After a seven-season hiatus, WSBK (in partnership with sister station WBZ-TV) resumed its role as the Red Sox flagship station, replacing WFXT, in 2003; however, channel 38 only broadcast the team's Friday night games. Most games were carried by the New England Sports Network (NESN), which aired the Friday night games outside of the Boston television market, effectively blacking out WSBK in these areas (the Red Sox hold an 80% ownership interest in NESN). Among the nationally prominent announcers that have performed play-by-play duties for the station's Red Sox games include Dick Stockton and Sean McDonough. WBZ stopped broadcasting the games after the 2004 season, and WSBK would cease airing games itself following the 2005 season, rendering the team's game telecasts cable-exclusive.

In addition to the Red Sox, WSBK was also the over-the-air flagship of the Boston Bruins for over thirty years. Its broadcasts were considered important enough to the station, especially in the 1970s when the Bruins were one of the perennially elite teams in the National Hockey League and enormously popular in Boston, that WSBK's then-owners Storer Broadcasting purchased and owned the Bruins for several years. The announcers for most of the Bruins games were hall-of-famer Fred Cusick (on play-by-play) and Johnny Peirson (on color commentary), who was later succeeded by Dave Shea and former Bruin Derek Sanderson; Dale Arnold called the play-by-play in later years. As with the Red Sox, Bruins coverage gradually moved to NESN. Nearly all home games were broadcast on NESN starting in 1984, and coverage left WSBK entirely in 2002.

In addition, WSBK became the over-the-air home of the Boston Celtics in 1993, replacing WFXT (which the team had owned at that time). It lost the broadcast rights in 1998 to WABU. Currently, all Celtics games not on national television are now broadcast on NBC Sports Boston. From 2005 until 2019, WSBK carried Atlantic Coast Conference college football and basketball games produced and syndicated by Raycom Sports (through its ACC Network package), after Boston College's move to the conference created regional interest for the ACC; the package ended as a result of ESPN launching an ACC Network cable channel.

In 2007, Major League Soccer announced that WSBK would become the exclusive carrier of the New England Revolution, replacing WLVI and FSN New England. After three seasons, the Revolution moved their non-nationally televised games to Comcast SportsNet New England (the former FSN New England and current NBC Sports Boston) in 2010; it was the last Boston area professional sports team to have locally produced over-the-air telecasts of regular-season games.

In December 2007, WSBK produced the first ever over-the-air television broadcasts of the Eastern Massachusetts High-School Football Super Bowl games, broadcasting three of the seven divisional championship contests (the other four aired on Comcast SportsNet New England). This arrangement continued through 2012; as of 2013, the six statewide state championship games air on Comcast SportsNet New England. Starting in 2009, audio-only simulcasts of these games began airing on then-sister radio station WBZ-FM (98.5 MHz). The station previously aired sports replay programs called Red Sox This Week and Patriots This Week during their respective seasons; the latter program has since moved to Comcast SportsNet New England. The station broadcasts the "Fifth Quarter" postgame shows after 4:25 p.m. ET Patriots' games (due partly to WBZ's network commitments with CBS to broadcast 60 Minutes), as well as 1:00 p.m. Patriots games on weeks in which CBS is airing a doubleheader.

One of WSBK's most remembered past programs was the informative and often amusing series Ask the Manager, created by then-general manager William J. Flynn in the mid-1970s. Each week Flynn, and later his successors Joseph C. Dimino, Daniel J. Berkery and Stuart Tauber would answer viewer questions on-air. The letters were read each week for many years by the station's announcer and host Dana Hersey. Other letter-readers included Sean McDonough and Carla Nolan. Meg LaVigne and Leslie Savage occasionally substituted in the manager's chair. The program's producer, Cliff Allen, was often referred to when off-camera, but did substitute as letter reader on many occasions. Allen died just weeks before Ask the Manager broadcast its final show in January 1999; the series finale was dedicated to his memory. Though it was long hampered by poor viewership, the show became a cult favorite. There were other attempts at local programs on WSBK through the years with shows such as We Don't Knock, A.M. Boston, and Hersey's Hollywood.

From May 2001 to August 2004, WSBK had rights to Lottery Live, the weeknight broadcasts of the Massachusetts State Lottery games. After the station moved into WBZ's studios, WSBK continued to broadcast the drawings. This was because WBZ had the games to itself for three years prior to the move. When WSBK's contract expired, the lottery drawings were moved to WCVB-TV (channel 5).

WSBK broadcasts Phantom Gourmet on weekends depending on the station's programming commitments (such as ACC college football); a half-hour version of the show has also aired at noon on weekdays since 2009. In 2007, WSBK revived Community Auditions, the local talent competition program that had run on WBZ-TV from 1965 to 1986. With series creator and former host Dave Maynard as a consultant (until his death in February 2012), the new Community Auditions is hosted by WJMN-FM (94.5) radio DJ Ramiro, with former WBZ entertainment reporter Joyce Kulhawik, WMJX (106.7 FM)'s Candy O'Terry and WODS's J.J. Wright as judges. Originally airing Fridays at 9:30 p.m. during its first four years, WSBK moved the program to Saturdays at midnight for a few months in the fall of 2011, before shifting it to Sundays at 12:00 p.m. in February 2012. Community Auditions is also syndicated to WWLP in Springfield and WPXT in Portland, Maine, and is rebroadcast on WBZ-TV on Saturdays at midnight and Sundays at 1:00 a.m.

WBZ-TV presently produces 18½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week for WSBK (with 3½ hours each weekday and a half-hour each on Saturdays and Sundays).

As WIHS-TV, the station had a small news operation, featuring former WBZ-TV anchor Victor Best. After becoming WSBK-TV, the station considered producing a local, in-house 10:00 p.m. newscast in the 1970s. However, after determining that the broadcast would get very low ratings and lose money, Storer concluded that there was no market for a local 10:00 p.m. newscast in Boston.

In 1980, WSBK did begin running a nationally syndicated newscast for independent stations, Independent Network News, which was produced by New York City's WPIX and distributed by its owner Tribune Broadcasting. INN did not do well in Boston; part of the reason for the low ratings was that the newscast sometimes aired late due to Red Sox or Bruins games, putting it in direct competition with the 11:00 p.m. newscasts on WBZ-TV, WCVB-TV, and WNAC-TV/WNEV-TV. After 1984, it also faced competition from a local 10:00 p.m. newscast on WLVI-TV. In January 1986, the weeknight INN broadcasts moved to WLVI, airing after that station's 10:00 p.m. news—before INN was dropped by the station after one year (it was not acquired by another station in the Boston market).

WSBK finally launched a 10 p.m. local newscast on October 25, 1993, by way of the WBZ-produced WBZ News 4 on TV 38, competing against both WLVI and a New England Cable News (NECN)-produced program on WFXT; this program was canceled on August 6, 1995, soon after the sale of WSBK to Paramount, as it was felt that the WBZ News 4 branding was incompatible with the then-new "UPN 38" brand. Rumors soon spread that NECN would move its 10:00 p.m. newscast from WFXT to WSBK; on October 2, 1995, the day after NECN's contract with WFXT expired, the regional news channel began producing UPN 38 Prime News. Lila Orbach was the original sole anchor, reprising her role on the WFXT newscast, eventually, Margie Reedy and R.D. Sahl (who were formerly paired as anchors during their tenures at WHDH-TV) took over for the remainder of its run. This newscast generally trailed both WLVI's program and, starting in 1996, an in-house newscast on WFXT; on October 4, 1998, WSBK discontinued UPN 38 Prime News and replaced it with a new 10:00 p.m. newscast produced by WBZ-TV.

On September 3, 2001, WSBK debuted a half-hour weeknight newscast at 7 p.m. On September 16, 2002, an hour-long extension of WBZ-TV's weekday morning newscast was added at 7 a.m. On September 12, 2005, the WBZ-produced weekday morning newscast on the station was expanded by one hour, now running from 7:00 to 9:00 a.m.

On December 11, 2008, WBZ and sister station WSBK-TV respectively became the fourth and fifth stations in the Boston market (behind WCVB, WHDH and WLVI) to begin broadcasting its newscasts in high definition. For a period starting in late-August 2009, WSBK also ran a rebroadcast of WBZ-TV's noon newscast at 12:30 p.m., this was subsequently replaced with Judge Judy. When the station joined MyNetworkTV, WBZ-produced newscasts on WSBK became known as WBZ News 4 on MyTV38. On September 29, 2014, the 10:00 p.m. newscast was expanded to a full hour on weeknights while remaining a half-hour on weekends.