The two stations share studios within the CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th Street in Midtown Manhattan; WLNY-TV's transmitter is located in Ridge, New York.

For its first 26 years of existence, it was owned by Long Island businessman Michael Pascucci; it primarily offered older movies and syndicated shows, though it also featured a 10 p.m. newscast.

It spent seven years fighting with Cablevision of Long Island for a channel on the cable system, a battle which sapped the station of potential viewers and was only resolved with the reinstatement of must-carry regulations.

In 2021, the Los Angeles Times revealed that the purchase came with a membership to the exclusive Sebonack Golf Club in Southampton, built by Pascucci, which CBS Television Stations president Peter Dunn treated as his own; another executive joked in a call that the acquisition of WLNY represented the purchase of a golf membership, not a TV station.

In 1965, the Island Broadcasting System, owner of WRIV in Riverhead and WALK in Patchogue, applied for a construction permit for UHF channel 55.

[11] The station, WLIG, would broadcast from a transmitter in Ridge, and be loosely aligned with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre;[12] its programming would be family-friendly, relying on old sitcoms and movies plus a 10 p.m. newscast covering Long Island.

It hoped to avoid the struggle that befell the previous attempt at Long Island–oriented commercial television, WSNL-TV (channel 67), which left the air after 20 months.

[15] The must carry rule was struck down by a federal appeals court in July 1985, but Cablevision did not add WLIG at launch, saying it was a distant station that would have required copyright fees and that it lacked channel capacity.

In announcing the transaction, Pascucci acknowledged the station had made a loss since its construction, though he noted he would continue to operate channel 55 and characterized the sale as a method of raising capital.

[14] In 1992, after a much-awaited false start two years prior,[25] Cablevision finally brought WLIG to its Long Island systems, adding more than 300,000 subscribers to the station's potential audience; by this time, it was breaking even.

[14] The station then relocated its main studios to a site on South Service Road in Melville, which also housed Pascucci-owned Oxford Resources Corporation, and in January 1994—after the reinstatement of must-carry laws put it on all remaining Long Island cable systems—it returned to the news business with a new 10 p.m.

In early 1996, the station opened news bureaus in Wayne, New Jersey, and Fairfield, Connecticut, and it obtained press credentials in New York City.

[30] In 2003, the station moved to channel 10 on all Cablevision systems on Long Island, though in the rest of the metropolitan area, it continued to be seen on a variety of other, higher numbers.

[36] The company announced that it would add additional on-air staff and expand WLNY's local news programming outside the 11 p.m. newscast that the station had at the time.

[43] The station then moved to UHF channel 29 in early August 2019 in phase 4 of the ensuing repack, which cleared the 600 MHz band nationally.

[44] A January 2021 investigation by the Los Angeles Times based on complaints to the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission revealed that, as part of the 2011 transaction by which Pascucci sold WLNY-TV to CBS, Peter Dunn, the head of CBS Television Stations, gained the use of a CBS-paid membership to the exclusive Sebonack Golf Club in Southampton, which Pascucci built and owns.

[29] The investigation, which also raised concerns about alleged racist, sexist and homophobic comments and the work environment at CBS-owned KYW-TV in Philadelphia, led to the network placing Dunn and Steve Friend, the senior vice president of news for the station group, on administrative leave and eventually to their termination.

These programs combined local segments with national content produced at the CBS News and Innovation Lab in Fort Worth, Texas.

[55] The station rebranded as New York 55 in September 2023, coinciding with the eight CBS-owned CW affiliates leaving the network and adopting similar brands.