[12] WVUE started broadcasting 24 hours a day in June 1986, becoming the last commercial television station in New Orleans to transition to a round-the-clock schedule.

On December 18, 1993, the Fox Broadcasting Company outbid CBS for the rights to the NFL's National Football Conference television package.

[15] On August 25, 1994, the company bought WVUE, WALA-TV in Mobile, Alabama, and KHON-TV in Honolulu, Hawaii, for $229 million; fellow sister station WLUK-TV in Green Bay, Wisconsin, was sold to the company one month earlier in a separate $38 million deal, which for a time, was challenged by an FCC petition filed by NBC alleging that the deal violated foreign investment limits for U.S. broadcasters[16][17][18] (the only Burnham station exempted from the deal was KBAK-TV in Bakersfield, California, which was spun off to Westwind Communications, a company founded by several former Burnham executives).

Because of Fox's acquisition of television rights to the National Football Conference, the switch resulted in channel 8 becoming the unofficial "home" station for the New Orleans Saints, carrying many of the team's Sunday afternoon road games.

[22] After Hurricane Katrina struck Greater New Orleans on August 29, 2005, WVUE temporarily moved its operations to the studios of sister station WALA-TV in Mobile, Alabama.

The damage that was caused to the building was so severe that Emmis released much of the station's on-air staff from their non-compete clauses, allowing them to seek employment outside of the market without penalty.

The sale of the station was also affected and was delayed for two years because of the rebuilding; Emmis had intended to divest all its television assets by the start of 2007, but retained ownership of WVUE in the interim until a buyer was found.

[25] Benson stated that he planned for the new company to acquire several radio and television stations nationwide and to be involved in movie production.

Upon the takeover, former WWL-TV news director Sandy Breland was appointed as WVUE's vice president and general manager, joining other WWL and Belo alumni among its staff.

Raycom president Paul McTear also noted that the story in The Advisor was the result of human error, and that there was not a deal to acquire the station.

The cash-and-stock merger transaction valued at $3.6 billion–in which Gray shareholders would acquire preferred stock currently held by Raycom–resulted in WVUE gaining new sister stations in nearby markets, including CBS/ABC affiliate KNOE-TV in Monroe and NBC/CBS affiliate KALB-TV in Alexandria, in addition to its current Raycom sister stations.

The station plans to "create a state-of-the-art digital television media center" at the new property in time for the NFL's Super Bowl LIX, an event in February 2025 that Caesars Superdome will host and Fox and WVUE will broadcast.

The station's current home 1025 S. Norman C. Francis Parkway, just seven blocks away, is being acquired by the neighboring Xavier University of Louisiana as part of an expansion of the school's programs.

For example, during much of the 1970s, WVUE preempted portions of ABC's daytime soap opera lineup and aired westerns, cartoons and off-network sitcoms in their place.

WVUE also preempted ABC's late night programming, which prior to the 1979 debut of Nightline, consisted of movies and reruns of prime time series.

In spite of ownership changes and programming modifications, WVUE was still unable to improve its standing in the ratings and largely wouldn't until it became a Fox affiliate.

[53] Ratings for Fox's programming had increased slightly from when the network was affiliated with WNOL; however, viewership for WVUE's newscasts remained well behind that of WWL-TV and WDSU.

The station has consistently ranked third among the market's morning and afternoon newscasts with three or more local options since that time, while posting its best ratings at night.

The station bests many network prime time shows during the 9 p.m. hour (WVUE's ratings for its prime time newscast outperformed WNOL-TV and WUPL's newscasts—both produced by their respective duopoly partners, WGNO and WWL-TV—in the same timeslots, with both of those stations eventually cancelling those programs outright), and at 10 p.m., WVUE has generally held second place in the market.

[56] In the November 2018 sweeps period, WVUE bested WDSU, WWL and WGNO in the local news race for the first time in ratings history.

In January 2010, WVUE underwent a major production upgrade that included the transition of field video to high definition, and the introduction of the first HD-based weather system in the New Orleans market.

[59] This was followed on September 12 of that year, with the debut of an hour-long newscast at 4 p.m.[60] In the summer of 2012, WVUE entered into a content partnership with The Times-Picayune in which the station and newspaper would collaborate on sports coverage.

On June 27, 2013, this partnership was expanded to include news content (including collaborations on investigative reports and entertainment stories), breaking news updates and analysis occasionally provided by Times-Picayune reporters on WVUE's newscasts and the sharing of photo and video content; WVUE also began to provide weather forecasts for the newspaper and its companion website, NOLA.com.

The station's signal is multiplexed: Digital subchannel 8.2 originally launched in 2007 as the Fox 8 Newschannel, a 24-hour news simulcast and rebroadcast service similar to WWL-TV's NewsWatch 15 cable channel.

[66][67] In March 2012, WVUE became one of the first (if not the first) stations in the United States to create a managerial position for a subchannel, with the hiring of Curtis Pace as general manager of digital channel 8.2.

[69] Due to reception problems that were reported by viewers following the transition, WVUE petitioned the FCC to move its digital signal back to UHF channel 29.

WVUE's high definition feed has since been added to other cable providers in southeastern Louisiana and southern Mississippi, as well as in the New Orleans market on AT&T U-verse.