Owned by the E. W. Scripps Company, the station has studios on Southwest Pine Island Road (SR 78) in Cape Coral, and its transmitter is located near Punta Gorda (east of I-75/SR 93) near the Charlotte and Lee county line.

In 1984, out of four applications, a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) administrative law judge gave the nod to Florida Family Broadcasting Limited, which included one Native American and one Asian investor, over three other groups seeking the construction permit.

[3] Florida Family—a company associated with Family Group Broadcasting, which two years prior had signed on WFTS-TV in Tampa—had to settle with the other applicants, a process that look longer than expected.

[7][8] Even though it was on the air in 1985, a full studio facility was not completed until 1987; that same year, the station affiliated with Fox (partly to prevent new independent WNPL-TV channel 46 from doing so) and extended its coverage north with an increase in tower height.

Right from the start, this emerged as a strong second-place finisher to WFTX's longer-established newscast, building on WINK-TV's longtime status as the most watched station in the market.

On May 25 after only eight months on-the-air, the nightly WZVN-produced newscasts on WNFM were dropped, due to Comcast's frequent technical difficulties (the cable provider operates the MyNetworkTV affiliate) which hindered in the program's ratings, as well as the success of the WXCW production.

To take on the big three stations, WFTX began airing an hour-long weeknight 6 p.m. newscast on August 2, 2010, with the second half competing against the national evening news programs on WZVN, WBBH and WINK.