[2] The station left the air sometime in 1933 as RCA turned its attention to all-electronic cathode-ray tube (CRT) television research at its Camden, New Jersey facility, under the leadership of Dr. Vladimir K. Zworykin.

In 1935, the all-electronic CRT system was authorized as a "field test" project and NBC converted a radio studio in the RCA Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center for television use.

[5] In August 1940, W2XBS transmissions were temporarily put on hold, as "Channel 1" was reassigned by the FCC to 50–56 MHz; technical adjustments needed to be made for the conversion.

The announcement for Bulova watches, for which the company paid anywhere from $4.00 to $9.00 (reports vary), displayed a WNBT test pattern modified to look like a clock with the hands showing the time.

For Ivory Soap, he held up a bar of the product, for Mobil gas he put on a filling station attendant's cap while giving his spiel, and for Wheaties he poured a bowl of the cereal, added milk and bananas, and took a big spoonful.

(Though a one-time-only, trial episode of Truth or Consequences aired on WNBT's first week of programming two years earlier; it eventually returned to TV in the 1950s.)

[13] At one point, a WNBT camera placed atop the marquee of the Astor Hotel in New York City panned the crowd below celebrating the end of the war in Europe.

[15] The station changed its call letters on October 18, 1954, to WRCA-TV (for NBC's then-parent company, Radio Corporation of America or RCA)[16] and on May 22, 1960, channel 4 became WNBC-TV.

It began on the station in 1953 as a local late night program, The Steve Allen Show, and NBC executive Sylvester "Pat" Weaver brought it to the network in 1954.

WNBC broadcast engineer Bill Steckman[20] died in the attack, along with Don DiFranco of WABC-TV; Gerard Copolla of WNET; Steve Jacobson of WPIX; and Bob Pattison and Isaias Rivera of WCBS-TV.

During this time, the station would participate in the "Analog Nightlight" program for two weeks, with a looped video in English and Spanish explaining how to switch to digital reception.

The station has sponsored a Food Drive together with local retailer Stop & Shop named "Feeding Our Families" which has been held on the second Saturday in April since 2017.

The station, along with Maury Povich and Fox owned-and-operated WNYW, co-funded the 1998 PBS documentary NY TV: By the People Who Made It produced by WNET.

As of January 2021, WNBC is one of nine NBC-owned stations that distributes programming either nationally and/or regionally (along with KNTV, KNBC, KNSD, WCAU, WVIT, WTVJ, WMAQ-TV and KXAS-TV).

WNBC's hallmark over the years has been strong coverage of breaking stories, the combination of straight news items and those with light-hearted and/or entertainment elements (as could be seen in such programs as Live at Five and Today in New York), and the generally low turnover of their on-air talent.

WNBC-TV was the first station on the East Coast to air a two-hour nightly newscast,[33] and the first major-market station in the country to find success in airing a 5 p.m. report, when NewsCenter 4 (a format created for WNBC by pioneering news executive Lee Hanna)[35] was introduced in 1974, a time when channel 4 ran a distant third in the city's local news ratings.

Hanna declared at the outset, "there will be no happy talk [...] we're not in business to be comedians", a veiled reference to the style of WABC's highly-successful Eyewitness News format.

[36] The NewsCenter format became a major success in New York, and NBC subsequently brought it to their owned-and-operated stations in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles.

[37] His theme for News 4 New York was based on a synthesized version of the NBC chimes, with a graphics package featuring a lightning bolt striking its logo from 1980 to 1990, a fancy die-cut "4".

[38] Many WNBC personalities have appeared, and have also moved up to the NBC network, including: Marv Albert, Len Berman, Contessa Brewer, Chris Cimino, Fran Charles, Darlene Rodriguez, Maurice DuBois, Michael Gargiulo, Tony Guida, Jim Hartz, Janice Huff, Matt Lauer, Tom Llamas, Dave Price, Al Roker, Scarborough, and Tom Snyder.

In the past, Albert, Berman, Brewer, Charles, Cimino, DuBois, Guida, Hartz, Lauer, Llamas, Roker, Scarborough, and Snyder have worked at WNBC and NBC at the same time.

Former reporter Perri Peltz returned to WNBC to co-anchor Live at Five with Simmons, making New York City one of the few large markets with two female anchors on an evening newscast.

[42] On June 16, 2009, WNBC announced that its 5 p.m. newscast would be replaced in September by a one-hour daily lifestyle and entertainment show by LXTV entitled LX New York.

4 p.m. anchor Stefan Holt, whose father Lester presides over NBC Nightly News down the hall from Studio 3K, assumed duties for the late newscast beginning July 17.

The new chopper ended up crashing into the Passaic River near Harrison and Newark, New Jersey on December 3, 1998; reporter Kai Simonsen and pilot Terry Hawes survived.

Several 'Big Four' stations throughout the United States had carried paid programs leading into prime time in a period during the Great Recession to some varied controversy (and often do to this day during Saturday evenings, a little-trafficked time period with no complaint), but the one airing in New York of the Lend America infomercial, which was hosted by ex-WNBC reporter Joe Avellar, attracted massive criticism from viewers and local media critics, especially involving Avellar's role as host and Lend America's part in the housing crisis, and to a much lesser extent, preemption of regular weeknight programming.

After completing the first portion of the tease, Simmons noticed co-anchor Chuck Scarborough distracted with something on his on-desk laptop, and thinking the take would be trashed and another take would be shot for air, shouted "The fuck are you doing?"

towards him in a manner seemingly meant as an inside joke among colleagues, while YouTube b-roll of a cruise ship departing Manhattan continued to roll before the promo's end.

[74] The text of the message, likely automatically generated by the station's content management system, featured one of three bullet points summarizing the article as a whole, and stated that Orthodox Jews moving from the core of New York and New Jersey and into their own self-established communities on the fringe of the Tri-State area due to gentrification was a reason for an increase of violent anti-Semitic attacks in the broader region;[75] "With the expansion of Orthodox communities outside NYC has come civic sparring, and some fear the recent violence may be an outgrowth of that conflict"WNBC's headline, and its inclusion in the tweet, was met with backlash from Jewish groups and people, including the progressive Zionist group Zioness and the Republican Jewish Coalition, which called out the station for "blaming the Orthodox community for the attacks".

Others prominent in the community also questioned the message, including Bari Weiss, former New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, Ron Kampeas of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, and The Forward's Batya Ungar-Sargon.