The Bulletin inherited the Record's "goodwill", along with the rights to buy the radio station WCAU (1210 AM, now WPHT) and the original WCAU-FM (102.9 FM, now WMGK) from their longtime owners, brothers Isaac and Leon Levy.

In the late 1950s, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) collapsed northern Delaware, South Jersey, and the Lehigh Valley into the Philadelphia market.

The Bulletin realized that channel 10's original tower, atop the PSFS Building in Center City, was not nearly strong enough to serve this larger viewing area.

In 1957, WCAU-TV moved to a new 1,200-foot (366 m) tower in Roxborough, which added most of Delaware, the Jersey Shore and the Lehigh Valley to its city-grade coverage.

Also in 1957, the Bulletin formed a limited partnership with the Megargee family, owner of CBS affiliate WGBI-TV (channel 22) in Scranton.

However, in its application for a waiver, CBS cited NBC's then-ownership of WRCV-TV in Philadelphia (channel 3, now KYW-TV) and WRCA-TV in New York City (now WNBC).

It briefly succeeded in 1956, when it extorted Westinghouse into exchanging channel 3 (then called WPTZ-TV) and KYW radio for NBC's Cleveland stations, WTAM-AM-FM and WNBK television.

The last CBS network program to air on channel 10 was a repeat of Walker, Texas Ranger, which began at 10 p.m. on September 9, 1995.

In March 2013, NBCUniversal announced that it would buy Telemundo affiliate WWSI from ZGS Communications for $20 million, giving WCAU a duopoly partner, as with several other NBC O&Os.

On February 14, 2014, WCAU, along with nearby NBC affiliate WBAL-TV in Baltimore, began to be shown on Comcast cable systems in the Susquehanna Valley after WGAL, the NBC affiliate in that market, was knocked off the air after a portion of the roof at the station's Columbia Avenue studio facility collapsed due to heavy accumulations of snow and ice caused by a winter storm that moved through the Eastern United States earlier that week.

[10][11][12][13] On April 16, 2014, WMGM-TV (channel 40), the NBC affiliate in nearby Atlantic City, announced that the station would drop its NBC affiliation and shut down its news operation on January 1, 2015, presumably due to WCAU claiming market exclusivity (Atlantic City is part of the Philadelphia market).

However, some technical and other operations, and the base and staging for the station's live news vehicles, will remain in Bala Cynwyd for the time being.

By airing the event, the station preempts the live national NBC telecast of the Macy's 4th of July Fireworks from New York City, though it carries the condensed replay immediately after both ceremonies end.

Since Comcast acquired the station's parent NBCUniversal in 2011, WCAU has aired Philadelphia's major sports teams in many years.

WCAU, as both a CBS and NBC station, has also aired Philadelphia's pro sports teams through their network coverage as well.

After being traded to NBC, only select games where the Eagles hosted an American Football Conference opponent would air on WCAU from 1995 to 1997, when CBS regained the NFL.

Beginning in the 2017–18 season, WCAU began displaying its in-court advertisements during all of the Philadelphia 76ers NBA franchise home games held at the Wells Fargo Center; the home games of the 76ers are currently broadcast on its sister regional sports network NBC Sports Philadelphia.

In 2015, WCAU assumed the local English broadcast rights of the Blue Cross Broad Street Run, held every first Sunday of May, taking over from ABC O&O WPVI after the 36th annual event in 2014.

John Facenda, who later gained fame as the voice of NFL Films, was the station's main anchorman from shortly after it signed on until 1973.

The 6 p.m. newscast was anchored by Facenda, with Philadelphia radio legend Phil Sheridan handling weather, Jack Whitaker on sports and Ed McMahon as announcer.

WCAU struggled through the late 1970s while most of its CBS sister stations dominated the ratings, but has since recovered and has been a solid runner-up to longtime leader WPVI for over a quarter century.

Shortly after CBS agreed to sell the station to NBC in the fall of 1994, WCAU began to slowly remove CBS references from the station's branding; in January 1995, the longtime moniker of Channel 10 News was eliminated in favor of NewsCenter 10, which coincided with the debut of a reconstructed newsroom facility.

On July 25, 2006, the program was renamed My PHL 17 News, Powered by NBC 10 to correspond with WPHL's then-pending switch to MyNetworkTV.

WCAU became the fourth and last English-language television station in the Philadelphia market to begin broadcasting its local news programming in high-definition on December 10, 2008, starting with its 4 p.m.

A former Philadelphia Eagle, Sikahema is one of several former NFL stars who have gone on to become sports news anchors (other notable examples include Jim Hill of KCBS-TV in Los Angeles and Len Dawson of KMBC-TV in Kansas City).

In August 2019, WCAU announced that the last 15 minutes of its 11 a.m. newscast would be cut in favor of their lifestyle show Philly Live beginning September 9.

[26] Additionally, co-anchor Tracy Davidson would be shifting away from the morning editions to anchor the 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. newscasts alongside Jacqueline London and Jim Rosenfield respectively.

On June 26, 1972, three news correspondents were killed in a helicopter crash in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where they had been covering the flooding stemming from Hurricane Agnes.

The victims were Del Vaughn of CBS News and Sid Brenner and Louis Clark of WCAU, and the pilot, Mike Sedio.

[48] WCAU is carried in central and southern New Jersey on certain cable systems that generally receive local channels from New York.