Sunbeam Television was founded on December 16, 1953, by Sidney Ansin, who inherited his family's shoemaking business in Massachusetts and later purchased South Florida real estate in the years after World War II, eventually settling in Miami Beach.

Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR), a merchant banker that purchased the parent company of CBS affiliate WTVJ (channel 4) in 1983,[22] was required to sell the station in order to meet regulatory approval for a different leveraged buyout two years later.

[23] At the same time, CBS was exploring the purchase of a station in the Miami market and originally bid $350 million for WTVJ,[24] but KKR opted to sell it in a package deal to Lorimar-Telepictures in April 1986.

While WSVN experienced ratings declines in prime time with the loss of NBC fare, their early-evening newscasts not only remained stable, but surpassed WTVJ for second place.

[50] On April 2, 2009, WHDH in Boston announced that it would not join other NBC affiliates in airing a new hour-long program fronted by outgoing Tonight Show host Jay Leno.

In its statement, Sunbeam CEO Ed Ansin cited concerns with both ratings and advertising revenue for its existing 11 p.m. newscast as the main impetus for the decision.

[52] Nearly five years after the Jay Leno Show conflict, WHDH once again faced the prospect of losing its NBC affiliation as the network was seeking an owned-and-operated presence in Boston.

In September 2015, NBC informed Sunbeam owner Ed Ansin that WHDH's affiliation would not be renewed, but then made an offer to buy the station for $200 million.

[53] Ansin believed that NBCUniversal's main motivation for these moves was to create further synergies with WNEU and co-owned New England Cable News for the purposes of advertising sales.

[61] Ed Ansin tried to file a lawsuit against NBC on March 10, 2016, for violating antitrust law given to Comcast when it brought NBCUniversal and that WNEU's over-the-air signal only covers half of Eastern Massachusetts.

[66][67][68] Three months later in November, NBCUniversal made their plains formal: the company announced that NBC programming would move from WHDH to new O&O WBTS-LD, a low-power station acquired in September 2016.

The effect of this dispute affected an estimated 230,000 customers in the South Florida area and interfered with the carriage of several NFL football games by local bars that subscribed to DirecTV during the outage.