The two stations share studios on Wavy Street in downtown Portsmouth; WVBT's transmitter is located in Suffolk, Virginia.

WVBT's programming is also seen on Class A repeater WPMC-CD (channel 36) in Mappsville, serving the northern Eastern Shore of Virginia.

In May 1996, WVBT began broadcasting from a new transmitter, giving it a coverage area comparable to the other major Hampton Roads stations.

[6] The merger was completed on December 19, at which point WAVY and WVBT came under common ownership with ABC affiliate WRIC-TV in Petersburg (serving the Richmond market).

(WAVY and WTKR consistently rank among the top four in terms of total-day viewership in the Norfolk–Virginia Beach–Hampton Roads market, while WVBT and WGNT have occasionally rotated between fourth and fifth place, a situation that allowed for Media General and, later, Nexstar to acquire WVBT directly in their respective group acquisitions involving the WAVY/WVBT duopoly.

Furthermore, any attempt by Nexstar to assume the operations of WTKR/WGNT through local marketing or shared services agreements would have been subject to regulatory hurdles that could have delayed completion of the FCC and Justice Department's review and approval process for the acquisition.)

On July 21, 2008, the station's newscast and sports show started to be produced in high definition after WAVY made the upgrade.

The program was then replaced by The Hampton Roads Show which launched January 18, 2010, from a new secondary set complete with a fully functional kitchen.

In 2012, WVBT aired The Daily Buzz on weekdays from 6 to 7 a.m. and again from 8 to 9 a.m. Sandwiched in between those two hours is the revised program of WAVY News 10 at 7:00 on Fox 43, which was originally canceled back in 2010.

The station could have used the calls WVBT-CA for the repeater (as most of these situations in other markets do) but likely decided against it to avert any confusion to viewers, due to the mere two-channel separation between channels 43 and 45.

To serve the northern part of Accomack County, Virginia that is too distant to receive signals from Norfolk, WVBT's main subchannel is rebroadcast on low-powered class A translator WPMC-CD, licensed to Mappsville with a transmitter site near Bloxom.