Owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division, WTVT maintains studios on Kennedy Boulevard on Tampa's west side, and its transmitter is located in Riverview.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) originally awarded the construction permit to build a station on channel 13 to the now-defunct Tampa Times newspaper, which owned WDAE radio (then at 1250 AM, now at 620 AM).

However, the FCC reversed its decision and awarded the license to the Tison group, which intended to open a studio facility in nearby St. Petersburg.

The station's remote broadcast facilities were chosen for network pool coverage of Alan Shepard and John Glenn's Mercury capsule splashdowns (in 1961 and 1962, respectively).

On December 18, 1993, Fox outbid CBS for the rights to the NFL's National Football Conference television package beginning with the league's 1994 season.

The final CBS program to air on WTVT was the made-for-TV movie Reunion, which began at 9 p.m. Eastern Time on December 11, 1994.

However, largely due to the Bucs' lack of success on the field for most of their first 20 years, the team's home games were almost always blacked out locally.

Once the Buccaneers began to build a winning team in the late 1990s, along with a new look and the opening of Raymond James Stadium, local television blackouts decreased, thus allowing more games to be shown on WTVT.

The blackout rules were lifted by the NFL in 2015 on an experimental basis, and have since been suspended indefinitely, meaning games are now shown on Channel 13 regardless of attendance.

News Corporation bought New World outright in July 1996;[6] the purchase was finalized on January 22, 1997, making WTVT the first owned-and-operated station of a major network in the Tampa Bay area.

In regards to the number of hours devoted to news programming, it is the highest local newscast output of any television station in both the Tampa Bay market and the entire state of Florida.

[11] Locally, WTVT began pooling video with WFTS as part of the agreement; however the stations otherwise maintain separate news departments.

In 1997, Steve Wilson and Jane Akre began work on a story regarding the agricultural biotechnology company Monsanto and recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), a milk additive that had been approved for use by the Food and Drug Administration but also blamed for a number of health issues.

Wilson and Akre then claimed that the station's actions constituted the news broadcast telling lies, while WTVT countered looking only for fairness, and wanted to air a hard-hitting story with a number of statements critical of Monsanto.

[20] In a joint statement, Wilson claimed that he and Akre "were repeatedly ordered to go forward and broadcast demonstrably inaccurate and dishonest versions of the story", and "were given those instructions after some very high-level corporate lobbying by Monsanto (the powerful drug company that makes the hormone) and also ... by members of Florida's dairy and grocery industries".