The WGBH Educational Foundation received its first broadcast license for radio in April 1951 under the auspices of the Lowell Institute Cooperative Broadcasting Council, a consortium of local universities and cultural institutions, whose collaboration stems from an 1836 bequest by textile manufacturer John Lowell, Jr. that called for free public lectures for the citizens of Boston.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) originally awarded a construction permit to Waltham-based electronics company Raytheon to build a television station that would transmit on VHF channel 2 in Boston.

However, after some setbacks and the cancellation of the construction permit license, WRTB never made it on the air, paving the way for the FCC to allocate channel 2 for non-commercial educational use.

[4] Channel 2 originally served as a member station of the National Educational Television and Radio Center (NETRC), which evolved into National Educational Television (NET) in 1963; for its first few years on the air, channel 2 only broadcast on Monday through Fridays between 5:30 and 9 p.m. For the first six years, operations were based out of studio facilities located at 84 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts, directly across from the Rogers Building main entrance to MIT.

[5] The uneven and rippled maple floors caused difficulties moving the heavy TV cameras, and loud creaking noises plagued the sound engineers.

[5] In 1957, Hartford N. Gunn Jr. was appointed general manager of WGBH; he would later earn the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's Ralph Lowell Award for his achievements in programming development.

[6] Under Gunn, who would serve until February 1970, WGBH made significant investments in technology and programming to improve the station's profile, and set out to become a major producer of public television.

In November of that year, the station installed a new full-power transmitter donated by Westinghouse, which increased channel 2's transmitting power to 100,000 watts.

Box 350, Boston, MA 02134 – would become associated with a jingle used on the WGBH-produced children's program, ZOOM, both in its 1972 and 1999 adaptations, exhorting viewers to send in ideas for use on the show[11]).

[12][13] The launch of WGBX was one facet of a plan developed by the WGBH Educational Foundation in the late 1960s to operate a network of six non-commercial television stations around Massachusetts.

However, these plans never materialized in their intended form; besides WGBX, the only other station that ultimately made it on the air was WGBY (channel 57) in Springfield, which launched in 1971.

[14] In 1970, longtime WGBH general manager Hartford N. Gunn Jr. resigned, to become founding President of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).

This new organization was launched as an independent entity to supersede NET (which itself was integrated into its Newark, New Jersey outlet, WNDT (now WNET), per request by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting) and assumed many of the functions of its predecessor network.

[19] WGBH built a new studio and headquarters complex, designed by James Polshek & Partners, in the nearby Brighton neighborhood of Boston.

The outside of the building carries a 30-by-45-foot (9.1 m × 13.7 m) "digital mural" LED screen, which displays a different image each day to automotive and rail commuters along the nearby Massachusetts Turnpike.

[20] Television and radio programs continued to be recorded at the Western Avenue studios until the WGBH stations completed the migration of their operations into the new facility in September 2007.

[26] The DTV nightlight program consisted of an episode of This Old House which provided information regarding the digital television transition, which looped until the analog signal was turned off.

[30] The remainder of the 4,500 square feet (420 m2) space[29] is shared with the "Newsfeed Cafe", a fast-casual restaurant which is open during and outside of studio operational hours.

Since the early 1970s, WGBH has used a distinctive soundmark created by composer Gershon Kingsley in conjunction with creative director Sylvia Davis and general manager Michael Rice.

WGBH features a mix of live-action and animated children's programs produced by the station and other distributors between 6 a.m. and 5 p.m., as well as on Saturday and Sunday mornings.

[42] In 2007, World programming was moved to the 44.2 subchannel of WGBX; WGBH replaced the network with a standard definition simulcast of its analog feed.

In a list announcing the winning bids for stations which participated in the 2016 United States wireless spectrum auction released by the FCC on April 13, 2017, WGBH-TV was disclosed to have agreed to sell a portion of the broadcast spectrum allocated to its UHF channel 19 digital signal for a bid of $161,723,929;[43] in a statement, the station said it would "use the proceeds to expand its educational services to children and students, further its in-depth journalism, and strengthen its modest endowment.

GBH also owns WGBY (channel 57), the PBS member station for the Springfield, Massachusetts, market, which signed on the air on September 26, 1971.