Through a channel sharing agreement, the stations transmit using WTTG's spectrum from a tower also located in Bethesda on River Road at the site of WDCA's former studio facilities.

WTTG's signal is rebroadcast on a low-power digital translator station, W24ES-D, in Moorefield, West Virginia[4] (which is owned by Valley TV Cooperative, Inc.).

Later in 1945, DuMont Laboratories began a series of experimental coaxial cable hookups between W3XWT and its other television station, WABD (now WNYW) in New York City.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted a 90-day commercial license – the first in the nation's capital – to WTTG that November 29, and the first program that aired on the station was a Washington Lions hockey game from Uline Arena on December 10, sponsored by the U.S. Rubber Company.

[5] It continued using the experimental 5 kW transmitter of W3XWT until late in 1947, when work had progressed enough on its final transmission site to move there at low power; DuMont did not complete construction and begin full-time, full-power operation until June 1949.

[1] In 1958 Washington investor John Kluge bought controlling interest in Metropolitan Broadcasting from Paramount Pictures and installed himself as its chairman.

However, in the late 1960s, it benefited from Metromedia's aggressiveness in acquiring top syndicated programming, giving it a significant leg up on WDCA, which signed on in 1966.

[11][12] On July 24, 2021, both WTTG and sister station WDCA (the latter of which is now branded as Fox 5 Plus) moved two miles (3 km) from their old studios in Washington's Friendship Heights neighborhood to a new broadcast facility on Wisconsin Avenue in Bethesda, Maryland.

Prior to 1994, when the Fox network established its sports division, WTTG aired the team's preseason games and training camp scrimmages during the majority of the 1980s into the early 1990s.

Management at both stations cited the decision to simulcast as a by-product of cross-regional news interests and increasing overlap between the Baltimore and Washington media markets.

This makes WTTG among the very few stations to extend their late newscast to midnight and one of three Fox affiliates (Kansas City's WDAF and Atlanta's WAGA-TV are the others) to air a two-hour late-night news block.

In 2004, the inner operations of WTTG during the station's first years under News Corporation's ownership were scrutinized in Robert Greenwald's documentary Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism.

The former WTTG employees claimed that they were ordered "from the top" to air an uncut tribute to Ronald Reagan from the 1988 Republican National Convention; they were told to run a piece that "rehashed the whole matter of [Senator Ted Kennedy's deadly car accident at] Chappaquiddick" which had "zero news value"; and there was an obsessive attitude over airing stories related to wedge issues such as race relations and AIDS.

Miller had claimed that her pro-gun views resulted from being the victim of a home invasion, but Washington Post blogger Erik Wemple discovered that her account was largely fabricated.

[17] Critics also highlighted missteps in Miller's reporting, including an incident where she confused the photographs of two black men and misidentified one of them as a convicted sex offender.

As part of the SAFER Act, WTTG kept its analog signal on the air until July 12 to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a loop of public service announcements from the National Association of Broadcasters.

[24] On April 4, 2017, the FCC announced that sister station WDCA was a winner in the 2016–17 spectrum reallocation auction, and in return, received $118,834,183 for the frequency.