Owned by Nexstar Media Group, WWTI has studios on Court Street in downtown Watertown, and its transmitter is located on Hayes Road in Denmark, New York.

Master control and some internal operations for WWTI and WSYR are based at Springfield, Massachusetts–licensed Nexstar sister station and NBC affiliate WWLP's studios in Chicopee.

Airing an analog signal on UHF channel 50 from studios at Stateway Plaza (with an Arsenal Street/NY 3 postal address) in the town of Watertown, it replaced a low-power translator of Utica's ABC affiliate WUTR previously on the allotment.

Prior to WFYF's launch, WWNY was a secondary ABC affiliate and also served Massena and Malone along with WIXT-TV (now WSYR) from Syracuse.

While the latter cleared more of NBC and/or Fox's programming offerings, WFYF aired NBC Sports' coverage of National Football League (NFL) games on Sunday afternoons, which lasted until 1995 when it began airing Fox Sports' NFL games (in addition to carrying Monday Night Football through ABC).

Its original ownership team consisted of several investors including General Manager David James Alteri, Steven Fox, and Richard Kimball.

In 2000, the United Communications Corporation (then-owner of WWNY) entered into an agreement with Smith Broadcasting to make WWTI's repeaters (W28BC and W25AB) separate full-time Fox affiliates known together as WNYF.

It joined Ackerley's cluster of New York stations with master control and other internal operations based out of centralcasting facilities at flagship WIXT in Syracuse.

In September 1998, an agreement between this station and Time Warner Cable allowed WWTI to launch cable-exclusive WB affiliate "WBWT".

When the new network launched on September 18, WWTI created a second digital subchannel to offer non-cable viewers access to CW programming.

Even after this station began maintaining a minimal local news presence for many years, WWNY remained the most watched outlet.

After the Ackerley Group acquired WWTI, it became more reliant on content originating from its sister stations in Upstate New York, particularly flagship WIXT in Syracuse.

The newscast was produced by WIXT from a secondary set at its studios and included brief localized updates (focusing on Watertown) twice an hour.

At the same time, WIVT and WBGH-CA announced their Binghamton news operation would be consolidated with sister station WETM-TV in Elmira.

The station's signal is multiplexed: WWTI's broadcasts, which were originally scheduled to become digital-exclusive on February 17, 2009, were forced to continue in both analog and digital until June 12 due to FCC objections at an estimated $50,000 in additional cost.