The three stations share studios on 41st Street off the Jones Falls Expressway on "Television Hill" in the Woodberry neighborhood of north Baltimore.

WBFF first came on the air on April 11, 1971,[5] founded by what was then called the Chesapeake Television Corporation, which was controlled by Julian Sinclair Smith.

Through a Chesapeake Television subsidiary, Commercial Radio Institute, Smith launched a new independent station in Pittsburgh, WPTT (now WPNT), in 1978.

That same year, WBFF received local competition again when WNUV-TV, then a two-year-old subscription television outlet, began to adopt a general entertainment schedule during the daytime and full-time by 1986.

In 1986, Sinclair agreed to affiliate WBFF and WTTE with the fledgling Fox Broadcasting Company, which debuted on October 9 of that year.

The growth and rise of Fox coincided with that of Sinclair Broadcast Group, which expanded its reach beyond Baltimore, Columbus and Pittsburgh during the 1990s.

In June 1991, Sinclair opened up the station's news department with Baltimore's first 10 p.m. newscast co-anchored by Lisa Willis (formerly of WWOR-TV in Secaucus, New Jersey) and Jeff Barnd.

Then, in September, Sinclair took the bold step of challenging WMAR-TV's pending license renewal and filing its own competing application for a new station.

Sinclair further circumvented the rules by taking over WNUV's operations under a local marketing agreement (LMA), with WBFF as senior partner.

While WBFF entered the new century thriving as both locally and as a Fox affiliate, its network partner threatened the station's immediate future.

In 2001, Fox's parent company, the News Corporation, became the new owner of Baltimore's UPN affiliate WUTB (the former WMET-TV) through its purchase of most of Chris-Craft Industries' television holdings.

In a move made clearly to protect its home interests, Sinclair persuaded Fox to sign a long-term contract to keep WBFF with the network.

However, a month after The CW's formation, News Corporation announced that WUTB and its other UPN affiliates would become the nuclei of its new MyNetworkTV service.

This included an option (that was exercisable from July 1, 2012, to March 31, 2013) to allow Sinclair to purchase WUTB, resulting in the creation of a virtual triopoly with WBFF and WNUV; while giving Fox the option to buy any combination of six CW and MyNetworkTV affiliates (two of which were standalone stations affiliated with the latter service) owned by Sinclair in three of four markets: Raleigh (WLFL and WRDC), Las Vegas (KVCW and KVMY), Cincinnati (WSTR-TV) and Norfolk (WTVZ).

On the afternoon of April 28, 2016, WBFF's studios were evacuated in response to a threat by a person wearing a hoax bomb; the suspect also allegedly set his vehicle on fire in the station's parking lot.

The suspect was later shot and apprehended by police; besides a desire to share end times prophecy content with the station (a USB drive with videos was confiscated by a security guard), no specific motive for the incident was determined.

In addition, "Good TV" offered expanded coverage of church services on Sunday mornings, local events, and paid programming.

Sinclair decided to invest in developing a news department for WBFF, with the station launching a nightly 10 p.m. newscast on June 3, 1991, co-anchored by Lisa Willis (formerly of WWOR-TV) and Jeff Barnd.

[21] In the aftermath of the incident, reporter Melinda Roeder and photographer Greg McNair were fired from the station in connection with their alleged involvement with the video.

WBFF announced in September 2015 that test broadcasts would begin in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., for ATSC 3.0 (dubbed "Futurecast") via a two-transmitter SFN with one transmitter in each city on UHF 43 delivering 4K UHDTV and mobile feeds to viewers.