It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Merrimack, New Hampshire–licensed Telemundo station WNEU (channel 60); it is also sister to regional cable news channel New England Cable News (NECN) and regional sports network NBC Sports Boston.

WBTS-CD is broadcast by full-power WGBX-TV (channel 44) from its transmitter site on Cedar Street, also in Needham, giving it full coverage of the Boston television market.

The station changed call signs to WBTS-CD in 2019 in anticipation of the relocation of the former WBTS-LD license, now WYCN-LD, to serve the Providence, Rhode Island, area.

[5] Founded by Robert Rines[6] and owned by Center Broadcasting Corporation of New Hampshire, a non-profit partnership between the Concord–based Franklin Pierce Law Center and the Boston–based Academy of Law Sciences, the station aired local community programming for the Nashua area, along with programming that was already being sold to cable stations though the Yankee Communications Network.

[13] WYCN-LP, along with three co-owned translators in Nashua, Manchester, and Concord, was sold by Center Broadcasting Corporation of New Hampshire to New Hampshire 1 Network, a company controlled by William H. Binnie, in 2010;[14] by this point, control of the stations had passed to longtime WYCN staffers Gordon Jackson and Carolyn Choate[6] following the death of Robert Rines.

[18] New Hampshire 1 Network filed to sell WYCN-LP to OTA Broadcasting, a company controlled by Michael Dell's MSD Capital, on January 14, 2013; the three translators were not included in the deal,[19] and began to simulcast WBIN-TV.

[24][25][26][27] Comcast subsequently pushed back the date of the removal to September 3, despite protests from viewers, politicians, and Nashua's public access station.

Until January 2018, WYCN-CD's original digital transmitter was 625 feet (0.191 km) off Trigate Road in rural Hudson, southeast of Nashua.

Early reviews found the news effort competitive with Boston's established local TV newsrooms but noted that the style—more in line with traditional major-market network affiliates than the flashy approach characteristic of WHDH—was not innovative and similar to other stations.

The staff consisted of a blend of new hires, younger than anchors at other stations, and existing NECN talent, as well as Pete Bouchard[40] and Phil Lipof, previously of WCVB.

To the existing resources of NECN and WNEU, NBC added approximately 80 employees, new vehicles for weather coverage, and a leased helicopter.