The stations share studios in the Renaissance Center office complex on South 60th Street in West Allis; WDJT-TV's transmitter is located in Milwaukee's Lincoln Park.

WDJT-TV gradually increased its profile in the market over the course of the early 1990s, notably by carrying gavel-to-gavel coverage of the murder trial of Jeffrey Dahmer.

The other Milwaukee independents and WDJT-TV alike initially rebuffed the network's overtures, leaving CBS scrambling for a new affiliate with only weeks before WITI was due to join Fox.

In 1983, Harry C. Powell Jr., a Florida man, successfully petitioned the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to add a new allocation for ultra high frequency (UHF) channel 58 in Milwaukee.

[1] In March 1985, the FCC rejected another applicant and issued a decision in favor of TV 58 Limited, a minority-owned firm headed by Debra M. Jackson and Milwaukee media veteran John Torres, who had worked for multiple radio stations and local Spanish-language newspaper La Guardia.

[1] The Carley Capital Group of Madison negotiated to provide funding to keep the business afloat,[7] but it withdrew by early August, and a new company entered the picture: Weigel Broadcasting, the Chicago-based owner of WCIU-TV in that city.

[24][20] With its limited presence, WDJT-TV was barely mentioned in the same breath as its more established competitors, independent WVTV and Fox affiliate WCGV-TV (channel 24).

[29] This left three commercial independent or soon-to-be-independent stations operating in Milwaukee as potential CBS affiliates: WVTV, WCGV-TV (about to lose Fox), and WDJT-TV.

[30] The year before, Gaylord Broadcasting, owner of WVTV, had signed a local marketing agreement to allow WCGV-TV, then owned by ABRY Communications, to handle its programming functions.

Founder and chairman Vic Eliason said that even without CBS's offer being "unreasonably low", a sale to a mainstream network would have been a hypocritical "act of consummate irresponsibility".

Weigel president Howard Shapiro noted that the station had already entered into preliminary conversations about picking up Milwaukee Brewers baseball games and planned to implement promotional and program purchasing strategies for its existing independent lineup.

[36] It was also starting the process of fixing its comparatively weak transmitting facility by conducting a site search; it had asked to share space on WISN-TV's tower and was rebuffed.

Tony Malara, head of affiliate relations for CBS, noted that time was becoming of the essence with WITI due to switch to Fox on December 11.

[41] CBS was prepared to have Milwaukee cable systems pipe in nearby CBS-owned stations, WBBM-TV in Chicago and WFRV-TV in Green Bay, as a stopgap.

[43] The deal came as a relief even at WITI, where officials were waiting for a replacement CBS affiliate to be announced to help guide viewers to relocated programs through both a station helpline and print advertising.

Its transmitter was nowhere near adequate enough to reach the entire market, and its studios did not approach the scope of a full-service network affiliate that projected to hire 60 additional people.

[50] A judge issued a preliminary injunction that upheld WISN's arguments, claiming a second tower would violate channel 12's land use agreement with Milwaukee County.

[60] Despite improvements in the technical facility, news, syndicated programming, and positioning, WDJT-TV has continued to trail its competitors in local ratings since becoming an affiliate.

[63] In July 2010, a flash flooding event caused damage to the Lincoln Park transmitter facility, leaving the station unable to normally broadcast for three days.

[67] When that transition was completed, the subchannel was freed up, and WDJT-TV was then among the first carriers of This TV, a new diginet launched from the start as a national service by Weigel and MGM on November 1, 2008.

In 2009, Weigel brokered subchannel 58.4 to Shorewest Realtors of Brookfield, Wisconsin, which since 2005 had been producing a local cable channel showing real estate listings.

After offering a five-minute newsbreak at 10 p.m. as a stopgap,[54] WDJT-TV debuted weeknight early and late evening newscasts from its new West Allis facilities on March 18, 1996.

However, when CBS shifted toward older viewers, WDJT-TV found itself needing to retool the news operation; as part of the changes, in 1997, the station also added weekend newscasts.

In 1997, when W46AR (now WYTU-LD) moved to the new Lincoln Park tower, WDJT began offering Spanish-language local news updates given by a bilingual reporter, Saúl Garza.

[82] Since 2008, the station has produced a 9 p.m. newscast for WMLW, which began as a trial during the 2007 World Series (when Fox affiliate WITI was committed to baseball coverage)[83][84] and became an hour-long program in 2016.

[89] On January 21, 2025, WDJT-TV meteorologist Sam Kuffel criticized businessman Elon Musk for making a gesture that many equated with a Nazi salute during the second inauguration of Donald Trump.