Owned by the E. W. Scripps Company, the station maintains studios on Plaza Drive (near M-37) on the northern side of Grand Rapids, and its transmitter is located southwest of Middleville.

In 1989, the station's stock was purchased by a New York-based company headed by Robert Dudley called Odyssey Television Partners.

Sinclair was precluded from acquiring WXMI directly, as it already owned CBS affiliate WWMT (channel 3).

[3][4][5][6][7] On April 24, 2018, Sinclair announced that it would sell WXMI and eight other stations – Sinclair-operated KOKH-TV in Oklahoma City, WRLH-TV in Richmond, KDSM-TV in Des Moines, WOLF-TV (along with LMA partners WSWB and WQMY) in Scranton–Wilkes-Barre and WXLV-TV in Greensboro/Winston-Salem–High Point, and Tribune-owned WPMT in York, Pennsylvania – to Standard Media Group (an independent broadcast holding company formed by private equity firm Standard General to assume ownership of and absolve ownership conflicts involving the aforementioned stations) for $441.1 million.

[8][9][10][11][12] Tribune terminated the Sinclair deal on August 9, 2018, and filed a breach of contract lawsuit, three weeks after the FCC's July 18 vote to have the deal reviewed by an administrative law judge amid "serious concerns" about Sinclair's forthrightness in its applications to sell certain conflict properties; the sale to Standard Media was also cancelled, as it was predicated on the closure of the Sinclair–Tribune merger.

[19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28] On March 20, 2019, the Cincinnati-based E. W. Scripps Company announced it would purchase WXMI from Nexstar upon consummation of the merger, as part of the company's sale of nineteen Nexstar- and Tribune-operated stations to Scripps and Tegna Inc. in separate deals worth $1.32 billion;[29][30] the sale was completed on September 19, 2019.

In regards to the number of hours devoted to news programming, it is the highest local newscast output of any television station in the Grand Rapids market.

On January 11, 1999, WXMI started its news department and launched the market's first prime time newscast at 10 p.m.

On March 2, 2013, WXMI debuted weekend morning newscasts, running for four hours from 5 to 9 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.