The first program broadcast on channel 6 was a live remote of an exhibition game of the Philadelphia Eagles against the Chicago Bears from Franklin Field.

[5] WFIL-TV was originally owned by Walter Annenberg's Triangle Publications, publishers of The Philadelphia Inquirer and owners of WFIL radio (560 AM, and 102.1 FM).

Channel 6 joined ABC before the network's first owned-and-operated station, WJZ-TV in New York City (now WABC-TV), signed on in August that year.

In 1968, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed a rule barring companies from owning newspapers and broadcast outlets in the same market.

[8][9] As a condition of the sale, Capital Cities had to spin off the radio stations to other entities – in Philadelphia, WFIL-FM (now WIOQ) was sold to its general manager John Richer,[10] and WFIL (AM) went to LIN Broadcasting.

[11] On May 1, 1971,[12] shortly after the sale was approved[13] and Capital Cities took control of channel 6, WFIL-TV changed its call letters to the current WPVI-TV.

Owning two stations with a significant signal overlap was prohibited by the FCC regulations of the time, similar to the same "one-to-a-market" rule that forced Triangle to split its newspaper/broadcast combination in Philadelphia many years earlier.

Capital Cities sought a waiver of the rules to keep WPVI, citing CBS' then-ownership of WCAU-TV locally in Philadelphia and WCBS-TV in New York.

On January 22, 1987, the station partially rebroadcast the suicide of Pennsylvania state treasurer R. Budd Dwyer—which had occurred at a press conference earlier that morning—during its noon newscast.

On September 12, 2009, WPVI moved to a new broadcasting complex at their same location at 4100 City Avenue near Bala Cynwyd next door to the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine.

On December 19, 2023, at approximately 8:30 p.m. WPVI's Chopper 6 crashed in Washington Township, Burlington County, New Jersey, while returning from an assignment, killing both the pilot and photojournalist.

[17] Under Capital Cities ownership, channel 6 frequently preempted ABC programming in favor of locally produced and syndicated shows.

In January 1975, when ABC entered the morning news field with AM America, WPVI chose not to carry the second hour of the program in favor of continuing Captain Noah and His Magical Ark at 8 a.m.; in response to viewer complaints, the station later moved Captain Noah to 7 a.m., with the one hour of AM America shifting to a tape-delay at 8:30.

In 1957, ABC added the program as part of its weekday afternoon network lineup and renamed it American Bandstand to reflect its more widespread broadcast scope.

His voice started to show signs of decaying in the mid-2000s, reaching a point to where Kaye's newly recorded opens in late January 2010 were pulled in less than a week.

On February 13, 2006, a revamped and fully modernized set debuted which included a glass etching background of several historical landmarks in Philadelphia positioned behind the anchor desk, shiftable lighting effects and a computerized AccuWeather center.

[28] On April 26, 2024, Apody announced via social media that she was leaving Action News after 18 years at the station despite the fact that she had not been seen on the air since October 2023, stating that her family life becoming more of a priority was the reason for her departure.

[29] On March 12, 2024, starting with the noon newscast, WPVI became the penultimate station in the group to debut the standardized ABC O&O graphics package.

On May 26, 2011, WPVI debuted an hour-long 4 p.m. newscast to replace The Oprah Winfrey Show, which ended its 25-year syndication run one day prior; this edition was broadcast from a smaller news desk located next to the main anchor desk that only housed the anchors of that newscast and allowed the team to utilize the Big Board more frequently.

While the newscast would return to being an hour-long edition of CBS News Philadelphia on the newly renamed Philly 57 on September 5, it has now been moved to an earlier start time of 8 p.m.

On September 11, 2023, WPVI-TV, along with sister stations WABC-TV and WTVD, launched an additional hour-long newscast at 10 a.m. which took over the time slot previously occupied by Tamron Hall.

The broadcast continues to deliver news in a traditional format, and also allows more focus to be placed on local newsmakers, and further discussion on topics addressed on Good Morning America and Live with Kelly and Mark.

[42] The 2011–13 ABC series Body of Proof, which was set around the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office and produced by ABC's television production division, used WPVI live trucks and microphones with the station's mic flags in a fictional sense, along with fictional press conference news graphics from the station, though none of WPVI's actual staff appeared during the course of the series, and retained the graphics and live truck look used before the introduction of the "Circle 6" logo.

Fewer than 40 full power stations in the United States are using Low-VHF channels since the mandatory digital conversion in 2009, and major network affiliates are mostly in large sparsely populated direct marketing areas where outdoor antennas are common.

WPVI's audio signal transmitted on a frequency of 87.75 MHz (+10 kHz shift) and was picked up on the lower end of the dial on most FM radios in Philadelphia and surrounding areas prior to the digital transition.

The FCC granted the station a temporary power increase to 30 kilowatts, following consent given from WEDY in New Haven, Connecticut, and WRGB in Schenectady, New York.

The FCC advises that a single antenna position will likely not pull both low- and high-band VHF signals (unlike the analog era).

Comcast added WPVI's HD feed to its lineups in Ocean and southern Middlesex counties, Roosevelt and Lambertville on August 22, 2012, on digital channel 906.

[53] WPVI's Live Well Network subchannel (both in high definition and standard definition) were added to the Comcast's southern Middlesex County system on November 27, 2012 (Live Well had previously been carried on that system through feeds from WPVI's New York City sister station WABC-TV), but have not been mapped into the Comcast digital boxes or DTAs.

Due to a contract dispute with ABC, WPVI was pulled from Cablevision systems in Monmouth, Ocean and Mercer counties on March 7, 2010.