Owned and operated by The CW's majority owner, Nexstar Media Group, WPHL-TV has studios in the Wynnefield section of West Philadelphia and broadcasts itself and WUVP-DT (channel 65), the area's Univision station, from a tower in the antenna farm at Roxborough.

In 2012, the station switched news providers from WCAU to WPVI-TV (channel 6), and in 2015, it began producing an in-house morning newscast.

Radio station WKDN of Camden, New Jersey, received a construction permit for ultra high frequency (UHF) channel 17 as WKDN-TV on January 27, 1954.

[3] After not building the facility, the station sold the permit to the Young People's Church of the Air, owned by Percy Crawford, for $40,000 in February 1959.

[3] When channel 17 went silent, its sale was immediately announced to a consortium headed by attorney Aaron Jerome Katz and two real estate men.

[8] The station returned to the air on January 31, only to go dark again on June 14, when an application for the sale of channel 17 was finally filed with the Federal Communications Commission.

[9] The Philadelphia Television Broadcasting Company, headed by Katz and advertising executive Len Stevens, was approved to purchase the station in mid-1964.

[3] After receiving approval to boost its effective radiated power from 12,000 to 626,000 watts,[10] the new owners returned channel 17 to the air on September 17, 1965, as independent station WPHL-TV.

[16] After the sale, in May 1968, WPHL-TV built a new tower and transmitter facility in Roxborough, separate from the Wyndmoor studio site, with an effective radiated power of 4.3 million watts.

It made history in 1969 as the first UHF independent station to air a scheduled regular-season pro football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Baltimore Colts; the game had been delayed from Sunday to Monday night due to the World Series being played in Baltimore, but WCAU-TV (channel 10), Philadelphia's CBS affiliate, refused to air it to prioritize prime time programming.

This came after AVC acquired the rightsholder from Phillies owner R. R. M. Carpenter Jr.[30][31] The next season, WPHL dropped the 76ers to carry Big 5 college basketball, which it believed more popular.

Over the course of 1971, every other U.S. Communications station was threatened with closure: KEMO-TV in San Francisco and WATL-TV in Atlanta were shuttered in March due to low advertising revenues,[39] and the group intended to do the same to WXIX-TV in Cincinnati and WPGH-TV in Pittsburgh that August;[40] WPGH-TV shut down,[41] though the Cincinnati station was ultimately spared and sold to Metromedia.

[42] However, WPHL-TV was frequently linked in rumors to financial difficulties of its own, including by creditors of the other AVC stations, and management admitted its sale was a possibility.

[43][44] After the transaction was called off, it emerged that the primary reason was a $2.2 million lawsuit filed by program distributor MCA Television for licensing fees it claimed to be owed.

Zawislak's 13-week trial as a host was ended by station management due to low ratings, but after receiving thousands of letters and cards in protest of the cancellation, management reversed its decision and brought him back, first on Saturday nights and later Saturday afternoons; he was the station's among highest-rated programs outside of Phillies games.

[52] The new ownership made a visible commitment to the station; in 1979, it increased the rights fees it paid to the Phillies just so the team could sign free agent Pete Rose.

Simultaneously, in part filling the gap on its schedule, WPHL-TV became the new television home of the Philadelphia 76ers, previously broadcast by WKBS-TV.

The vast majority of the WKBS-TV program inventory was purchased by the Providence Journal Company for WPHL-TV alongside a $500,000 package of cameras, video tape, and editing equipment.

[66] By that time, WPHL-TV was holding on to second in total-day share among the three major Philadelphia independents; the new third station was WGBS-TV (channel 57), owned by Milton Grant, which went on the air in late 1985 and seven months later risen to either a tie for second with WPHL or a narrow third-place finish, depending on the ratings survey.

[67] Five months later, the company opted not to sell WPHL-TV; it had not found a buyer at its reported $100 million asking price amid a national fall in independent TV station valuations.

News of a sale generated additional offers for WPHL-TV from companies that reportedly included Tribune Broadcasting and MCA, each owners of major-market independent stations.

[72] Dudley's firm, retaining the Taft Broadcasting name,[75] took control on December 29, 1987, and immediately fired six of the nine department chiefs, including general manager Gene McCurdy after a 12-year tenure, making way for five former WTAF-TV executives to replace them.

Randy Smith outlined a strategy of using the new executives' connections made while at WTAF to compete more vigorously with that station; expressed interest in becoming a Fox affiliate if TVX were ever to sell channel 29; and considered the possibility of starting a newscast "after 1989".

Channel 17 also became the broadcast home of Philadelphia Flyers hockey, though with fewer games per season than WGBS-TV had offered, and began an effort to win back rights to the Phillies, whose contract with WTXF-TV expired after 1992.

[77] That station in turn could no longer accommodate baseball on its own because of increasing programming commitments from Fox and resulting pressure from the network.

[80] Days later, Taft announced that Tribune Broadcasting had become an "investment partner" in a $19 million cash infusion that also granted Tribune an option to buy WPHL-TV outright;[81] in the new arrangement, Dudley Taft would continue to run the station with the existing management;[82] he told Broadcasting that the deals were "a response to current conditions that anyone who started business in the late 1980s has had to make".

[99] Other contributing factors included baseball and hockey strikes that deprived Inquirer News Tonight of sports lead-ins at launch;[100] a lack of a sound business plan; and low ratings against WTXF-TV's established 10 p.m.

She moved to rebrand the season as "Philadelphia's WB17",[107] committed to an expansion of the 10 p.m. news to an hour, and expressed a desire to add more newscasts in other dayparts.

[136] A provision in the contract released CBS, one of its former owners, from its affiliation agreements for eight CW stations, including WPSG in Philadelphia, on September 1, 2023.

[1] Giannini retired after 20 years in 2024 and was replaced as general manager by Lloyd Bucher, previously of WJZY in Charlotte, North Carolina.