It signed on June 1, 1984, as the first mainstream independent station in the Columbus market, joining the Fox network at its launch two years later.

When Sinclair was able to acquire WSYX from River City Broadcasting in 1998, it transferred the WTTE license to Glencairn, Ltd.—predecessor to Cunningham—and continued to run it under an LMA.

[5] However, Ohio State had objections about a high-power facility interfering with its radio astronomy observatory, blotting out weaker signals.

[4] In January 1970, the FCC approved a proposal by Nationwide, formulated in conjunction with Ohio State, to make a three-way channel shift to resolve the issue.

[6] Nationwide entered into an agreement to pay half the cost of a new tower in Westerville, to be shared by WOSU-TV and WNCI-TV.

[10] Shortly after, a second application was received by Christian Voice of Central Ohio, owner of Christian radio station WCVO (104.9 FM) in Gahanna, which proposed a religious and family-friendly outlet in contrast to the more traditional independent station format contemplated by the Commercial Radio Institute.

[11] FCC administrative law judge David Kraushaar ruled in favor of the Commercial Radio Institute application in October 1979 because Christian Voice of Central Ohio already owned a station in the market.

[13] It was unsuccessful in overturning the initial decision at the FCC's review board[14] and with the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

[17] Wet weather left the tower site muddy and made it impossible to maneuver heavy equipment, leading the station to scrap an April 1984 planned sign-on.

[23] As early as 1989,[24] WTTE officials floated the possibility of airing a 10 p.m. newscast, either by setting up an in-house news department or by partnering with another station.

In 1990, general manager Mike Quigley told Columbus Business First that the station was targeting 1991 to debut such a newscast on weeknights, though the $2 million start-up costs had resulted in delays to the plan.

When WCMH-TV debuted a 10 p.m. newscast production on WWHO-TV in 1994, observers believed it had been hurried to air to spoil a pending joint venture between WTTE and WBNS-TV, the market's leading local news station.

The deal was soon amended at the behest of federal regulators to omit WSYX-TV, which Sinclair had originally planned to control under a local marketing agreement.

[52] It and WWHO were the only full-power television stations in the Columbus market that honored the original DTV transition date of February 17, 2009.