The two stations share studios on Broad Street in downtown Hartford; WCCT-TV's transmitter is located on Rattlesnake Mountain in Farmington, Connecticut.

Following a transmitter upgrade by Hartford NBC affiliate WVIT in 1982, WATR relaunched as WTXX, a regional independent and the first station owned by Renaissance Broadcasting.

WATR-TV was originally a dual secondary affiliate of both DuMont[3] and ABC, sharing them with New Haven-based WNHC-TV (channel 8, now WTNH).

[5] At the time, the network's primary affiliate in Connecticut, WHNB-TV (channel 30) in New Britain, was hampered by a weak signal in New Haven and the southwestern portions of the state.

A notable local production was Journeys to the Mind, a half-hour talk show with host Joel Dobbin, which approached topics of the occult with a serious and sober tone.

In 1981, the Thomas/Gilmore interests opted to sell channel 20 to a joint venture of Odyssey Television Partners (later to become Renaissance Broadcasting) and Oppenheimer and Company.

[10] Soon after taking over, Odyssey replaced channel 20's tiny 250-foot (76 m) tower with a more powerful transmitter that more than doubled its signal and gave it a coverage area comparable with the major network stations in the state.

It was a typical general-entertainment independent, carrying off-network series, movies, and cartoons presented by the local children's show Kidstime with T.X.

Channel 20's transmitter was located further south than the other major Connecticut stations, resulting in a significant overlap with Fox flagship WNYW.

In October 1992, Renaissance Broadcasting sold WTXX to Counterpoint Communications, a non-profit media firm with close ties to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford.

WTIC-TV wanted to establish a full-time local marketing agreement (LMA) with WTXX, which basically amounted to channel 20 being programmed by its main competitor.

That July, after negotiations with WTIC collapsed, WTXX entered into a lease agreement with Viacom-owned WVIT, which would provide 27+1⁄2 hours a week of its programs.

[14] Its schedule now included cartoons and children's programs during the morning and afternoon hours, and syndicated shows whose local rights were owned by WVIT during the early evenings.

By spring 1996, the station expanded its LMA with WVIT to cover the entire day, except for overnights and the hours when the Catholic Mass aired.

Tribune had been seeking a waiver in anticipation of the FCC relaxing its rules to allow such media combinations to exist with the agency's blessing, which would include television duopolies.

In late 2007, the FCC loosened its restrictions on newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership perhaps creating an opening for Tribune (which was purchased by investor Sam Zell in December 2007) to retain WTXX without a waiver.

In June 2009, after 56 years of transmitting from various locations in New Haven County, WTXX shut down its analog transmitter in Prospect, solely using WTIC-TV's tower in Farmington for its full launch into the digital age.

The sale of WCCT-TV and WTIC-TV was part of a larger series of deals involving nineteen Nexstar- and Tribune-operated stations to Tegna and the E. W. Scripps Company worth a combined $1.32 billion.

[35] In July 1993, WTXX debuted a nightly 10 p.m. newscast produced by NBC station WVIT, called Connecticut News Live at 10.

Originally, this was not simulcast on WTXX but has since been added (the 10 p.m. newscast continues to be shown live on WCCT, if it is preempted on WTIC due to sports programming overruns).

WTIC also produces a weekly public affairs show called The Real Story, which airs Sunday mornings at 8:30 a.m. with a repeat on WCCT at 11 a.m. Other than simulcasts and default carriage of WTIC's newscasts in the event of Fox Sports programming delays, WCCT does not carry traditional local newscasts produced specifically for the station.