WSBK is also available via satellite throughout the United States on Dish Network as part of its superstation package (which since September 2013, is available only to existing subscribers of the tier).

WXEL's proposed transmitter in Melrose was never built, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) revoked the construction permit and deleted the call sign in November 1960.

The station also carried two 15-minute local newscasts each weekday, at 5:45 and 10 pm, which consisted of an announcer reading news headlines into a camera.

However, team management was worried about the lack of penetration of the UHF band, leading to playoff away games being simulcast on WHDH-TV (channel 5) in 1965 (that station had previously aired select Celtics telecasts, including playoff away games starting in 1962); the following season, the team moved back to WHDH outright.

A few months after the purchase, the station's call sign was changed to the present WSBK-TV, named after the company's ticker symbol on the New York Stock Exchange, "SBK".

Storer scored its biggest coup in 1967, when it secured broadcast rights to the Boston Bruins from WKBG-TV (channel 56, now WLVI), and eventually owned the team for a three-year period from 1972 to 1975.

During the next few years, as the Bruins became a contender for the National Hockey League's Stanley Cup championship (led by young superstar Bobby Orr), the popularity of these games led to a spike in UHF antenna purchases, and helped make channel 38 one of the leading independent stations in the country.

In addition to an increasingly stronger lineup of syndicated programs—which during the late 1960s through (to a lesser extent) the 1990s included cartoons (such as Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies shorts and the 1960s made-for-TV Popeye cartoons) and sitcoms (such as The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Cheers (itself set in Boston and now owned by CBS), M*A*S*H and Frasier), WSBK continued to run some network programs that were preempted by the local NBC (WBZ-TV), ABC (first WNAC-TV, then WCVB-TV), and CBS (first WHDH-TV, then WNAC-TV/WNEV-TV) affiliates until 1981.

During the 1970s through the mid-1980s, WSBK's cartoon programs were hosted by Willie Whistle, a clown who used a bird-whistle in his mouth to create a distinctive voice he was recognized for.

WSBK's carriage did not reach the same level as the other stations, but covered large portions of New York, and a handful of cable providers in Florida (which produced the unusual circumstance of Red Sox games being regularly broadcast into part of the New York Yankees' main market; similarly, Yankees flagship station WPIX was carried by Boston area cable systems).

When the FCC's syndication exclusivity rules (or "Syndex") were strengthened in the early 1990s, distribution of all out-of-market station signals were hampered.

The rule protected stations in local markets from out-of-market competition by superstations that aired identical syndicated programming.

The management of this "blocking" would prove so cumbersome that many cable providers began dropping distant signals such as WSBK and effectively stopped most superstation distribution.

Distributors such as Eastern Microwave attempted to make it easier for cable providers by substituting shows that could not be blocked, but the damage had already been done by then.

For a few years, WSBK signed off at 1 a.m. or 2 am, but began operating 24 hours a day (except on early Monday mornings) by the end of the decade.

At this time, ownership was officially under the KKR subsidiary of New Boston Television, although Storer was still referenced on-air as being the parent company of WSBK.

WSBK remained an independent station and was eventually put up for sale again to protect existing affiliate WFXT (channel 25), which Fox would acquire soon afterward.

[8] In 1996, Viacom acquired a 50% ownership stake in the network from Chris-Craft Industries, which effectively made WSBK-TV a UPN owned-and-operated station.

On September 19, 2022, WSBK-TV reverted to being an independent station, ending its affiliation with MyNetworkTV and leaving the programming service without an outlet in the Boston market.

WSBK became the Red Sox's over-air flagship station in 1975 and remained so for 20 years until it lost the broadcast rights to WABU (channel 68, now WBPX-TV) in 1996.

Among the nationally prominent announcers that have performed play-by-play duties for the station's Red Sox games include Dick Stockton and Sean McDonough.

Each week Flynn, and later his successors Joseph C. Dimino, Daniel J. Berkery and Stuart Tauber would answer viewer questions on-air.

Originally airing Fridays at 9:30 p.m. during its first four years, WSBK moved the program to Saturdays at midnight for a few months in the fall of 2011, before shifting it to Sundays at noon in February 2012.

However, Storer received indications that such a venture would get low ratings and lose money, leading it to conclude that there was no market for a local 10 p.m. newscast in Boston.

This newscast generally trailed both WLVI's program and, starting in 1996, an in-house newscast on WFXT; on October 4, 1998, WSBK discontinued UPN 38 Prime News to refocus towards sports and entertainment shows (around the same time, sister UPN stations KSTW in Seattle and WTOG in Tampa canceled their own in-house newscasts, while KMAX-TV in Sacramento downsized to focus on morning news), though NECN continued to produce news updates within Bruins telecasts during the 1998–1999 season.

[30] The station replaced the 10 p.m. newscast with a two-hour late-evening comedy lineup (including Cheers and Mad About You), promoted in the fall of 1998 as Laughter Dark.

After Viacom merged with CBS, putting WSBK and WBZ-TV under the same ownership, WBZ once again began producing a newscast for the station starting in 2001.

On September 12, the program began airing 8 to 9 a.m. to make room for the first two hours of the nationally syndicated morning show, The Daily Buzz.

The Morning Show aired its last broadcast on June 30, 2006, The Daily Buzz was dropped at the same time (it would return to the market in January 2011 on WLVI, and later moved to WBIN-TV).

For a period starting in late-August 2009, WSBK also ran a rebroadcast of WBZ-TV's noon newscast at 12:30 pm; this was subsequently replaced with Judge Judy.