Owned by Nexstar Media Group, the station maintains studios on East Victory Drive/US 80/SR 26 in Savannah's Live Oak section, and its transmitter is located on Little Neck Road in unincorporated northwestern Chatham County, near Pooler.

[3] The station began broadcasting on VHF channel 3 on February 1, 1956, and was co-owned with WSAV radio (630 AM; later WBMQ) after a long legal battle over the frequency with the owners of WJIV (900 AM).

It initially aired an analog signal from a transmitter on top of a bank building on Broughton Street in Downtown Savannah.

WSAV briefly had an FM station using an antenna atop the middle of three AM towers at the transmitter facility on Oatland Island.

In 1996, Ellis was sold to Retirement Systems of Alabama who merged it with AFLAC's former broadcasting division to form Raycom Media.

In early 1997, Raycom traded WSAV and two other stations to Media General in return for WTVR-TV in Richmond, Virginia.

To commemorate the event, Savannah Mayor Otis Johnson officially announced the date as "WSAV Day" and lauded the station for its many achievements over the decades.

Because LIN already owned ABC affiliate WJCL and operated Fox affiliate WTGS (channel 28), the companies were required to sell either WSAV or WJCL and its SSA with WTGS to another station owner in order to comply with FCC ownership rules as well as planned changes to those rules regarding same-market television stations which would prohibit sharing agreements.

[8][9][10] On August 20, 2014, Media General announced that it would keep WSAV and sell WJCL to Hearst Television, with WTGS going to Sinclair Broadcast Group.

[11][12] The sale was completed on December 19,[13] and Hearst closed on its purchase of WJCL and Birmingham-based WVTM-TV (the latter of which was acquired due to an ownership conflict with WIAT) three days later.

[14] On January 27, 2016, Media General announced that it had entered into a definite agreement to be acquired by Nexstar Broadcasting Group for $4.6 billion.

Captain Sandy would appear on the news set wearing a vaguely nautical cap and blazer, as a nod to the region's dependence on the Atlantic Ocean.

By the end of the 1970s, the new out-of-town owners of WSAV expressed embarrassment with Captain Sandy's routine as newscasts became more strait-laced and serious, with non-scientist weather presenters replaced with certified meteorologists trained in accurate forecasting.

NPG made the Captain finally conform to convention, prescribing him a suit and tie like other newscasters, and put the puppets out of commission, to the almost-certain sorrow of area children.

One of the personalities behind the Captain Sandy character was smooth-voiced Joe Cox, who later left WSAV to become weatherman at cross-town rival WJCL, where he also hosted an evening radio program on WJCL-FM 96.5.

It was a cable-exclusive station, and as a result, used the call sign "WBVH" (standing for "The WB Savannah") in a fictional manner for identification purposes.

On April 1, 2016, it was announced that WSAV-DT2 would assume the CW affiliation from WSCG-DT1/DT2 on September 12 of that year, thus shifting MyNetworkTV and MeTV to WSAV-DT3 (replacing the station's weather radar, which launched on May 16, 2012).

In 1976, as part of a major expansion of its news department, WSAV moved to a former insurance office that is next door to its original East Victory Drive studios.

The station now produces a half-hour midday newscast at 11 a.m. followed by the lifestyle/advertorial show The Bridge at 11:30 a.m. Another recent addition to local news on this outlet occurred on June 21, 2010, when it added a broadcast weeknights at 5:30.