Since 2010, midday and weekend late newscasts, along with World News Now, are overlaid with Canadian paid programming on those providers; however, the latter has carried the normal WCVB-TV feed in recent years.[when?]

[3][4] However, almost as soon as it signed on, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) began investigating allegations of impropriety in the granting of the television station's construction permit.

His actual first on-air portrait was displayed as part of a donation pledge drive for the Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon.

Simon's costume consisted of an old top hat, and fluorescent green facial makeup with black circles painted around each eye and gloves that had the fingers cut out of them.

Boston Broadcasters sold WCVB to Metromedia in 1982 for $220 million, the costliest sale ever made for a local station at the time.

[9][10] Channel 5 was included in the original deal, but was concurrently spun off to the Hearst Corporation, which had purchased fellow ABC affiliate KMBC-TV in Kansas City, Missouri, from Metromedia in 1982.

Winfrey's decision to end her daytime talk show in May 2011 resulted in many stations scrambling to replace it with equally strong programming.

With the scheduling of the 4 p.m. hour resulting in low ratings, changes were made in November 2016; at this time, the half-hour NewsCenter 5 at 4:00 premiered, and Inside Edition moved to 4:30 pm.

WCVB now airs 2+1⁄2 hours of local news from 4 to 6:30 pm, with a break from 6:30 to 7 p.m. for ABC World News Tonight (coincidentally, anchored by WCVB alum David Muir since September 2, 2014), then picking up again from 7 to 7:30 p.m. Due to its commitment to local programming, the station was quick to preempt programs, including underperforming ABC prime time shows.

[20] Until the late 1990s, WCVB broadcast the 1954 film White Christmas annually during the holiday season, preempting ABC network programming.

[21] WCVB was originally in the running to become the Massachusetts State Lottery's host station in late 1986, when WBZ-TV relinquished the rights.

In the months leading up to the winning bid, WCVB management had asked Janet Langhart to host the nightly lottery drawings if the station won the contract.

Frequent substitute hosts for Hayes on WCVB were Kristen Daly (later a news reporter/anchor for WABU and WLVI) and Nancy O'Neil, wife of former Red Sox pitcher Dennis Eckersley.

The Massachusetts Lottery (in association with Jonathan Goodson) also backed an hour-long Saturday night game show, Bonus Bonanza, which debuted on February 4, 1995.

Bonus Bonanza had randomly drawn contestants play elimination games (similar to The Price Is Right) to win big cash prizes.

The drawings returned to WCVB in August 2004 in a revamped format, with only on-screen graphics displaying the already-drawn winning numbers for a minute or so.

In 2008, for the first time in the Lottery's broadcast history, midday Numbers Game drawings were introduced, with the results running at the bottom of the screen, at 12:50 p.m. weekdays, during Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

The weeknight Numbers Game drawings became part of NewsCenter 5 Prime Time Update, a five-minute news and weather segment that began airing within the last ten minutes of Chronicle in 2009.

Though the broadcasts generally rated higher than the competing wire-to-wire coverage on WBZ-TV, the station announced in November 2006 that it would stop carrying the race, as declining viewership and advertising revenue made it difficult for the station to justify providing all-day coverage, despite production costs being shared with WBZ-TV and the Boston Athletic Association (BAA).

[24] On June 22, 2022, the BAA announced that the marathon would return to WCVB beginning with the 2023 race, in a partnership with ESPN, which carries the event nationally.

[25] In addition to the ESPN simulcast, Hearst's other New England stations—WMUR-TV in Manchester; WMTW in Portland; and WPTZ in Plattsburgh, New York–Burlington, Vermont—also air WCVB's coverage of the race.

For statewide news coverage throughout Massachusetts, WCVB shares resources with the two other ABC affiliates in the state: WLNE-TV in New Bedford (which serves Providence, Rhode Island) and WGGB-TV in Springfield.

Through the next couple decades, the station boasted the most-watched news team of Chet Curtis and Natalie Jacobson who married each other while serving as co-anchors.

Channel 5 even displaced WHDH in total viewers and the 25–54 demographic at 11 pm, marking the first time since 1998 that WCVB swept all of its newscast timeslots.

WCVB president and general manager Bill Fine stated that the newscast expansion "...addresses an expressed need of Boston's viewers by providing additional options to receive NewsCenter 5 at new times".

Since 1972, WCVB-TV, as a part of its commitment to serving the community through extensive local programming, has run a series of different public service campaigns to help educate people on relevant issues and values of the day.

Over the last few decades, these campaigns have consisted of the following: The station's signal is multiplexed: The ABC subchannel is offered in ATSC 3.0 (NextGen TV) format from the transmitter of WUNI.

As part of the renewal, Hearst also signed agreements to add the network as digital subchannels of WCVB-TV and sister stations KCRA-TV in Sacramento, WBAL-TV in Baltimore, KOCO-TV in Oklahoma City and WXII-TV in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

As part of the SAFER Act, WCVB temporarily kept its analog channel as one of three nightlight stations in the Boston area (alongside WBZ-TV and WGBH-TV).

The station's nightlight service loop consisted of the official public service program from the National Association of Broadcasters, an episode of This Old House (a nationally distributed show on PBS presented by Boston's WGBH-TV), and reruns of segments from WCVB's newscasts; all were dedicated to instructions and questions about switching to digital television for viewers who have not yet upgraded their old analog sets.