The two stations share studios on Northwest 18th Terrace in Doral; WBFS-TV's transmitter is located in Andover, Florida.

The aggressive program purchasing and promotional tactics of its builder, the Grant Broadcasting System, carried the company into bankruptcy, but WBFS was its most successful station and became a competitive independent in the market.

There had been some activity around it when it was first assigned, drawing two applicants;[3] the Miami Biscayne Television Corporation obtained the construction permit, but it went unbuilt.

[7] Gateway abandoned its bid by 1966,[8] and Hialeah food processor Budd Mayer filed for the channel, proposing subscription television (STV) operation using the Telemeter system.

[11] In 1977, Miami STV Inc., a company owned by the Block family of Milwaukee, filed with the FCC for authority to build channel 33.

Like Gold Coast of a decade earlier, Miami STV was aligned with a subscription television operation, in this case SelecTV.

Miami STV was granted a construction permit in July 1980, with the FCC turning down an application for a high-power satellite of WCIX in the process; the owners proposed a hybrid service of ad-supported and subscription programs, similar to what WKID was already broadcasting on channel 51.

[12] The call letters WBFS-TV were assigned under Block in February 1983;[13] that November, the Shlenker Group, which owned KTXH in Houston and KTXA in Fort Worth, Texas, filed to buy a majority stake in the unbuilt station from Miami STV for $46,250.

[21] The Grant Broadcasting System sold the Fort Worth and Houston stations in early 1985 and expanded to new startup independents in two larger markets, Philadelphia (WGBS-TV) and Chicago (WGBO-TV).

Equally importantly, when the television advertising market slowed down, the highly leveraged Grant-Shlenker consortium faced financial difficulties.

[26] One syndicator even went as far as to file a competing application against WBFS-TV's license renewal, largely as a leverage maneuver in bankruptcy court.

[37] Combined sold WGBO to Univision in early 1994 for $30 million; not all of the Spanish-language network's programming was airing in Chicago at the time.

[38] In April 1994, Combined signed an affiliation agreement for WBFS-TV with The WB, a new television network slated to start in January 1995.

[40] Even though the deal did not close for nearly a year—as it was dependent on Paramount selling another Philadelphia station, WTXF—WBFS joined the new UPN at its launch on January 16, 1995.

[62] The Now format was discontinued in 2023; WBFS would later reintroduce a locally produced 9 p.m. newscast anchored by Jim Berry and Najahe Sherman.

[64] In 2020, Inter Miami CF announced that, alongside WFOR-TV, WBFS would carry regionally televised matches.