The station is owned by Gray Media, and maintains studios on Columbia Drive in Johnson City and a transmitter on Ingraham Hill Road in the town of Binghamton.

For many of its early years, WNBF was the only station available to viewers in the nearby Scranton–Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, market as set owners pointed their roof-top antennas north towards Binghamton.

As part of Triangle's exit from broadcasting in 1972, WNBF-AM-FM-TV and sister stations in Altoona and Lebanon (both in Pennsylvania) were sold to Gateway Communications.

[2][3][4][5][6][7] As a condition of the purchase, Gateway sold the WNBF radio stations to Des Moines–based Stoner Broadcasting and retained channel 12 which was renamed to its current call sign, WBNG-TV on October 28, 1972.

The required money was funded by a new senior credit facility created after the previously announced sales of Detroit's WMYD and San Francisco's KBWB fell apart.

In December 2008, it was announced a deal was reached between Granite and Time Warner Cable to carry WBNG's high definition feed throughout the Binghamton region.

On that date, ABC affiliate WENY-TV signed on a new second digital subchannel in order to offer access to CBS for the first time ever in that market.

[15] However, WBNG continues to be shown in Otsego County (alongside WKTV-DT2) as a result of viewer complaints caused when the station was taken off Time Warner Cable systems on August 31, 2016.

[18] The acquisition was completed on August 2,[19] making WBNG-TV the second Gray property in New York State and a sister station to fellow CBS affiliate WWNY-TV in Watertown.

Outside of Binghamton, WBNG is carried on Charter Spectrum in Liberty and Highland Lake, in Sullivan County, which is a part of the New York City market.