GWN was granted the Remote Commercial Television License (RCTS) in June 1985[4] and the service went to air on 18 October 1986 using the call-sign WAW.

[6] The takeovers gave the network a monopoly over all commercial television services in regional Western Australia.

In 1987, Bendat and Kerry Stokes merged their media interests into joint company BDC Investments.

Kerry Stokes gained control of the Seven Network in 1995, and attempted to sell GWN to Seven in return for more shares.

[11] And as a result, the network soon ended its programming deal with Nine for exclusive broadcast of its shows in regional areas of the state.

In March 1999, GWN opted to become a sole Seven Network affiliate, in-line with its eastern sister, Prime Television.

[13] The network's transmission operations were moved from Bunbury to Prime Media Group's digital broadcast facility in Canberra in April 2005.

Similar to Mildura Digital Television, the new channel will operate under a Section 38B licence,[14] as a Network 10 affiliate named Ten West.

The broadcasters shared a single digital transmitter for GWN, WIN WA and the new Ten West in standard definition.

[17] On 30 July 2011, the regional networks began broadcasting on the Viewer Access Satellite Television platform.

This was SWM's second attempt at purchasing Prime Media, after its previous attempt in 2019 was thwarted by Australian Community Media boss Antony Catalano and rival WIN Corporation owner Bruce Gordon, citing Seven's debt problems at the time and its poor ratings performance as the reason for their refusal.

[22] Since the network's inception, it has featured a broad range of original regional programming, including the children's program Doopa's Club featuring the station mascot Doopa Dog;[23] as well as community service strand GWN7 InfoNet, a series of short updates listing local community events.

Below is a table showing the logical channel numbers (LCN) for the full suite of digital services.

Digital terrestrial transmissions were available in all populated cities and major towns of regional Western Australia.