[3] The station is also broadcast in parts of Canada, in particular throughout the adjacent Golden Horseshoe region of Ontario, including the Greater Toronto Area.

WUTV signed on the air on December 21, 1970, as a general entertainment independent station, and its original studios were located at the transmitter site in Grand Island, New York.

WUTV was the only independent station in Buffalo for many years; its schedule included cartoons (such as Astro Boy and Yogi Bear), sitcoms (such as The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, The Patty Duke Show, and The Munsters), and sci-fi shows (such as Lost in Space, Ultraman, The Invaders and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea), along with classic movies and drama series.

Fox then signed an agreement with WNYB-TV (channel 49, now WNYO-TV) to become its new Buffalo affiliate, and WUTV reverted to being an independent station full-time, effective September 1, 1989.

[4] Ahead of the disaffiliation from Fox, Act III Broadcasting (a company controlled by Norman Lear) offered to buy WUTV, and Citadel accepted.

[6] The sale was finalized in June 1990, and Lear moved WNYB-TV's stronger programming to WUTV, in turn bringing the Fox affiliation back to the station.

The Buffalo Sabres, who held a minority stake in the new WUTV, which was then sold WNYB-TV to Tri-State Christian Television (Act III was known for such acquisition practices).

[10] After Sinclair came to a retransmission consent agreement in February 2007 nationally with Time Warner Cable, WUTV and WNYO-TV's high definition feeds began to be carried locally by the provider.

In the event Sinclair had pulled WUTV from TWC, a separate agreement allows Fox programming to be piped in from out of market (likely involving Nexstar Media Group, whose stations have been used as out-of-market superstations in the past to temporarily replace in-market network affiliates displaced due to carriage disputes).

This lack of local news programming ended on April 8, 2013, as the 10 p.m. newscast produced by NBC affiliate WGRZ channel 2 moved from WNYO-TV to WUTV.

Along with the move, it was expanded to seven nights per-week, and the station also announced plans to air an encore of the final hour of WGRZ's morning show on a one-hour delay.

[17] On July 1, 2021, WUTV introduced a new in-house newscast; it used resources from other Sinclair-owned stations in the state of New York, with its anchors based out of WSTM-TV in Syracuse and its weather and sports segments produced from WHAM-TV in Rochester.

[1] As part of the SAFER Act,[22] WUTV kept its analog signal on the air until March 3, 2009, to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a loop of public service announcements from the National Association of Broadcasters.

Although WUTV was the Fox affiliate available in Ottawa, Rogers decided to switch to WJBK in order to ensure uniformity in the source cities for all U.S. network television signals.