WLVI (channel 56) is a television station licensed to Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, serving the Boston area as an affiliate of The CW.

On December 19, 1952, the Middlesex Broadcasting Company, owners of WTAO (740 AM) and WXHR (96.9 FM), applied for a construction permit to build a new television station in Cambridge, using Boston's allocated channel 56, which would originate from studios and transmitter atop Zion Hill in Woburn.

[2] After having broadcast a test pattern since August 31, WTAO-TV debuted on September 27, 1953, as Boston's third television outlet and first on the UHF band.

[5] On March 30, 1956, the station quit telecasting: its last program was a ceremony marking its departure from the air, with Massachusetts lieutenant governor Sumner G. Whittier delivering an address.

[7] The channel broadcast a demonstration program that November 10 of what viewers, particularly clergy, could expect from the Catholic TV Center.

[2] After briefly operating from temporary quarters[18] at 1050 Commonwealth Avenue in Brookline, the Kaiser-Globe partnership purchased a former supermarket next to the newspaper in Dorchester in 1968 and built a $2.25 million studio facility on the property,[19] which was completed in 1969.

[20] This came alongside a move of the transmitter from Woburn to Needham on a tower shared with WSBK-TV (the former WIHS-TV),[21] further expanding the station's signal and filling in gaps to the south and west.

[24] After having cut from 50 to 10 percent ownership in 1968,[25] in 1974, the Globe sold its share in WKBG back to Kaiser in exchange for a $500,000 note and $270,000 in advertising credit for the station; the newspaper recorded a $289,000 loss on its broadcasting investment.

[26] The call letters were then changed to the current WLVI-TV (reflecting the Roman numeral for 56, LVI) on May 1,[27] in part because WKBG was being confused with other local stations in ratings diaries.

[32] To purchase WLVI, Gannett had to divest itself of one of its two UHF stations; it ended up selling both WPTA in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and WLKY-TV in Louisville, Kentucky, to Pulitzer Publishing.

In the 1970s and 1980s, "Uncle Dale" Dorman (also a popular Boston radio personality) hosted the cartoons via off-screen announcements.

[35] From 1985 to 1990, WLVI again became the carrier of the Boston Celtics road games after it made a five-year, $12.5 million deal with the team.

[38] By 1993, with competition from WFXT and WSBK for news in the planning stages and no marquee sports programming, the station was seen as lacking an identity.

[43] The station briefly went off the air in August 1998, when a crane that was erecting a nearby studio-to-transmitter link (STL) tower collapsed onto WLVI's studio building.

The station used a satellite truck for a network programming downlink and studio space at WCVB-TV (channel 5)'s facilities in Needham for its 10 p.m.

A proposal was put together and initially agreed with Kevin Dunn, who headed a $67 million bid, but investors pulled out, and the Red Sox ended up spending three seasons on WABU (channel 68).

[51] On September 14, 2006, four days prior to the launch of The CW, Tribune Broadcasting announced that WLVI would be sold to Sunbeam Television, owner of then-NBC affiliate WHDH-TV, for $117.3 million.

[53] The sale received FCC approval in late November 2006, creating the Boston market's third television duopoly (after CBS-owned WBZ-TV and WSBK, and Hearst-owned WCVB-TV and Manchester, New Hampshire-based WMUR-TV).

[58] At WTAO-TV's inception, the station aired two fifteen-minute evening newscasts, at 6 and 10:30 pm, branded as United Press News and anchored by Bob Merhmann.

Despite a loyal audience and ratings that were competitive with the network affiliates,[60] WKBG lost a considerable amount of money on the newscast and shut the news department down in November 1970.

[23] MacDonald remained at the station for another year to host a weekday morning interview program; he took a position with the then-new WCVB in 1972.

[72] Boston Globe columnist Jon Keller, who joined the same year,[73] was also a fixture for over a decade as the station's political analyst.

[77] By 2002, when Boston's WB in the Morning ended, WLVI's 10 p.m. newscast had slipped to second in the ratings behind WFXT, which had established its own local news service in 1996.

[80] By the time of the Sunbeam sale, due to the increasing popularity of the WFXT newscast and Tribune's closure of news departments at its stations in Philadelphia and San Diego, there were unconfirmed rumors and speculation that Tribune would shut down the WLVI news department and have the newscast outsourced to another station or even canceled altogether.