Owned by Gray Media, the station has studios on East Market Street (US 250 Business) in downtown Charlottesville, and its primary transmitter is located on Carters Mountain south of the city.

It took Charlottesville considerable time to develop a local TV station in part because half the city sits in the United States National Radio Quiet Zone, which constricted acceptable broadcast facilities in the region.

[3] Another factor was the location of part of Charlottesville and the surrounding area in the United States National Radio Quiet Zone.

In the ensuing public comment period, the city of Charlottesville and Charles Barham, the owner of WCHV radio, jointly petitioned to have very high frequency (VHF) channel 8 reassigned from Petersburg to a planned mountaintop tower near Crozet.

This was denied by the FCC, which reasoned that removing VHF service from the larger city of Petersburg was unwarranted, though it conceded that a UHF station in Waynesboro would be unviewable in Charlottesville and added channel 64 to compensate.

[6] One week later, CBS affiliate WLVA-TV signed on from Lynchburg on VHF channel 13, and Charlottesville residents reported good reception.

[9] In the meantime, Virginia Broadcasting Corporation, a company owned by stockbroker and bluegrass music artist William Marburg—better known as Bill Clifton—filed for Charlottesville's channel 64 allocation.

[17] Another company known as the Virginia Broadcasting Corporation, a consortium of more than 30 local stockholders, filed with the FCC on October 19, 1971, for permission to build channel 29.

[19] The FCC granted the construction permit on March 1, 1972, and the company announced it would be operating within a year from a transmitter on Carters Mountain and studios on Main Street.

[29] In 2003, WVIR was the object of a major libel case in Virginia stemming from a 2001 news report that incorrectly stated a man's property had been searched and cocaine had been seized.

The station was built by Gray Television, owner of WHSV-TV, and was followed by the conversion of the former WHSV translator into WVAW-LP, a separately programmed ABC affiliate for the Charlottesville area, as well as the 2005 launch of WAHU-CA "Fox 27".

[36] The station began producing high-definition newscasts in April 2008, making Charlottesville the second-smallest market at the time with HD local news.

[38] WVIR-TV ceased regular programming on its analog signal at 12:30 p.m. on February 17, 2009, the original date for the digital television transition under federal mandate (which was later pushed back to June 12, 2009).

To acquire WVIR-TV, Gray concurrently announced it would sell WCAV and WVAW-LD, as well as WAHU-CD's programming, to Lockwood Broadcast Group.

[2] In addition to WVIR-CD, the former WAHU-CD which now broadcasts the same subchannels on the UHF band in the Charlottesville area, the station received a construction permit in 2022 to build a digital replacement translator on channel 30 at Madison, Virginia.