It was also the third television station to be built from the ground-up and signed-on by the E. W. Scripps Company, following WEWS in Cleveland and WMCT (now WMC-TV) in Memphis.

[5] Scripps also published The Cincinnati Post, the city's afternoon newspaper whose name served as the basis for the WCPO call letters.

Following the release of the FCC's Sixth Report and Order in 1952, all of Cincinnati's VHF stations changed channel positions.

[13] Hoskins held reporter Elaine Green and her cameraman at gunpoint in the parking lot of WCPO's studios.

A self-described terrorist, Hoskins stated in a videotaped interview with Green that he had, among other things, murdered his girlfriend before arriving at the studios.

After voicing his displeasure with local government, Hoskins ended by saying that he would let his hostages go, but only after they helped him to barricade himself in their newsroom in anticipation of a shootout with police.

Scripps had to maintain the CBS affiliation on WCPO until WKRC's affiliation contract with ABC expired the following year; in the meantime, in October 1995, WCPO introduced new "9 Stands for News" station branding that shrunk the CBS logo and revamped its news graphics and theme music,[17] improving ratings.

Improvements around the station included upgraded weather graphics that match WCPO's upgraded graphics, new panel displays on set (to replace rear-projection CRT monitors on set and old plasma displays with obvious burn-in) and Scripps purchasing JVC HDPro equipment for WCPO.

In December 2009, WCPO reached an agreement with local Fox affiliate WXIX-TV (channel 19) to pool videographers at press conferences.

[24] On October 1, 2012, WCPO-TV debuted the new Scripps-mandated standardized graphics and music package ("Inergy" by Stephen Arnold).

The station runs its own radar located in Batavia, which has an average refresh time of ten seconds.

On July 1, 2003, WCPO began to operate a second Doppler weather radar out of the Clermont County Airport in Batavia.

In July 2007, WCPO launched a radar system with satellite imagery to allow fine street-level detail of weather events to specific locations.

National Weather Service NEXRAD radars in Wilmington, Ohio (which covers Cincinnati, Dayton and Columbus from a central point, as is done in several areas of the country with multiple major cities), Indianapolis and Louisville are used to provide full-market coverage of severe weather events.

[27] In 1999, WCPO won the Peabody, duPont, and Sigma Delta Chi awards for Laure Quinlivan's investigations into mismanagement of construction of Paul Brown Stadium.

[28] The station won another Peabody in 2001 for Quinlivan's one-hour documentary, Visions of Vine Street, that aired commercial-free in prime time in the wake of the 2001 riots.

[32] Outfitted with several cameras, Chopper 9 was used for traffic reports, updates on construction of Paul Brown Stadium and Fort Washington Way, and Friday night football specials.

[33] On February 7, 2014, WCPO debuted another Chopper 9, this time a Bell 206B-3 JetRanger, for daily traffic and news coverage.