In 1964, it was sold to Post Corporation, owners of WLUK-TV in Green Bay, Wisconsin, who changed the calls to WLUC-TV to match its moniker at the time "Lucky 6".

In late 2005 following Raycom's purchase of the Liberty Corporation, the company announced WLUC would be sold along with fellow NBC station WPBN-TV and full-time satellite WTOM-TV serving the Northern Lower and Eastern Upper Peninsula.

WLUC joined WPBN/WTOM, Saginaw's WEYI-TV, and Toledo's WNWO-TV as part of Barrington's family of stations in and around Michigan.

Therefore, WLUC relies on cable as well as satellite carriers DirecTV and Dish Network to distribute programming to the entire area.

In August 2012, WLUC and Fox UP became the official affiliates of the Green Bay Packers Television Network for the Marquette–Escanaba market, taking over for WJMN, which lost the rights to team programming as the last contract ended, which was included as a part of WFRV's official station status in the Green Bay market.

[4] After 30 years of separate ownership, WLUC and WLUK in Green Bay were briefly reunited as sister stations on December 19, 2014, when Sinclair purchased WLUK and WCWF as part of required sales of stations by LIN Media in order to merge with Media General, which already owned Green Bay's WBAY-TV.

The one-hour weekly Sunday morning program regularly featured Finnish visitors to the region including two Presidents of Finland, a Prime Minister, a number of ambassadors, consuls general of Finland, members of the country's parliament, numerous entertainers, choirs, teachers, and students among others.

From this point until abandoning the rainbow "6", a viewer unfamiliar to the market could accidentally discern that WLUC was an ABC affiliate.

The subchannel replaced WZMQ (formerly WMQF) as the area's Fox affiliate after it temporarily suspended programming when its previous owner Equity Media Holdings declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Previously outside of WZMQ (which during Equity's ownership, was often unable to be received outside of Ishpeming and Marquette due to continuous transmitter issues and lack of engineering staff), Fox was available in the Upper Peninsula over-the-air from WLUK in Menominee County and via a low powered translator of that station in Escanaba, W40AN.

WLUK was carried by Spectrum in the West and Central Upper Peninsula along with WLUC-DT2 except in Gogebic County which is covered by KQDS-TV from Duluth, Minnesota.

As Sinclair acquired WLUK from their owners LIN Media as part of LIN's merger with Media General in mid-December 2014, the issues between WLUK and WLUC-DT2, including the Escanaba translator issue, were resolved in the time they were under common ownership before WLUC's sale to Gray Television.

This included the eventual closedown of W40AN in the summer of 2018, along with new carriage agreements with local providers which gave preference to WLUC-DT2 over WLUK.

For its entire existence, WLUC has held the number-one spot in local Nielsen ratings by a wide margin.

[13] WLUC has a much larger news department than either of its competitors; ABC affiliate WBUP has only been airing newscasts continuously since 2004 (an earlier attempt was abandoned due to low ratings and budget cuts), and MyNetworkTV (then-CBS) affiliate WJMN-TV did not offer coverage of its home territory until April 21, 2014.

WJMN did air brief Upper Peninsula-specific news and weather updates produced at WFRV's facilities in Green Bay.

Starting September 8, 2009, WLUC-DT2 began airing a local weeknight prime time broadcast (known as Your Fox UP News in Primetime) from a new secondary set.

Unlike most NBC affiliates in the Eastern Time Zone, WLUC does not air newscasts at midday or weeknights at 5:30.

In addition to its main studios, the station operates bureaus in Escanaba (on Ludington Street), Iron Mountain (on South Stephenson Avenue/US 2/US 141), and Houghton (on Shelden Avenue/US 41).

On September 6, 2017, WLUC debuted major upgrades to its studio, including a new, larger set and a rebuilt control room.