NECN also operated several news bureaus in the New England area, including Manchester, New Hampshire; Hartford, Connecticut; Worcester, Massachusetts; Portland, Maine; Providence, Rhode Island; and Burlington, Vermont.

Other partnerships NECN maintained in its early years included WGGB-TV in Springfield, Massachusetts, WGME-TV in Portland (prior to Hearst's 2004 purchase of WMTW), WTNH in New Haven, Connecticut, WPRI-TV in Providence, Rhode Island, and The Boston Globe.

Some of the better-known reporters who got their start at NECN include ABC's Dan Harris, CNN's Suzanne Malveaux, and CNBC's Maya Kulycky.

Conversely, NECN has also employed some of the long-lived veterans of the Boston television market, including R. D. Sahl, Tom Ellis and Chet Curtis.

[5] Shortly after Fox Television Stations bought WFXT from the Boston Celtics, it chose not to renew the contract with NECN upon its expiration on October 1, 1995 (the station would launch its own news operation a year later);[6] the next day, the newscast moved to UPN affiliate WSBK-TV and was renamed UPN 38 Prime News.

[12] Under NBCUniversal management, NECN also began sharing resources with the other NBC affiliates in New England: WVIT in New Britain, Connecticut (an O&O), WWLP in Springfield, Massachusetts, WJAR in Providence, Rhode Island, and WCSH in Portland, Maine (and its Bangor semi-satellite, WLBZ), along with maintaining its existing relationship with WPTZ.

In December 2013, Time Warner Cable announced that NECN would be dropped from its lineups in Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts by the end of the year.

In late December 2022, as part of cost-cutting measures, NBCUniversal announced the closure of the NECN Vermont bureau at the end of the year.