The two stations share studios at Broadcast House on 10 Mile Road in Southfield, where WXYZ-TV's transmitter is also located.

Channel 7 was also the third of ABC's five original owned-and-operated television stations to sign on, after WABC-TV in New York City and WLS-TV in Chicago, and before KGO-TV in San Francisco and KABC-TV in Los Angeles.

In the 1950s, WXYZ-TV began producing a series of popular and innovative programs that featured many personalities from WXYZ radio.

The facility was built on the site of a former farm and included three television production studios and its own free-standing broadcast tower with a single-person maintenance elevator.

In May 1985, Capital Cities Communications, which owned Detroit radio stations WJR (760 AM) and WHYT (96.3 FM, originally WJR-FM, now WDVD), announced its acquisition of ABC.

[3] To comply with the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) ownership limits of the time, the new Capital Cities/ABC would have to sell either WXYZ-TV or each of three radio stations that the two companies had owned – WJR, WHYT, or ABC-owned WRIF (101.1 FM; the former WXYZ-FM, which was sold as part of the merger).

[4] ABC had sold WXYZ (AM) a year earlier in 1984 to the radio station's general manager, Chuck Fritz, who changed its call sign to WXYT.

[7][8][9] At the time, Cozzin Communications (a broadcast group owned by stand-up comedian/actor Bill Cosby) emerged as another prospective bidder for the station.

[11] This deal, which displaced Fox from WKBD-TV (channel 50), prompted CBS to attempt to lure WXYZ-TV, as well as sister station WEWS-TV in Cleveland to drop its ABC affiliation in favor of switching to CBS; WDIV was not an option for the network, as that station had a long-term affiliation contract with NBC at the time.

Petersburg, KTVK in Phoenix and WJZ-TV in Baltimore, would lose their ABC affiliations to competing Scripps-owned stations (WFTS-TV, KNXV-TV and WMAR-TV, respectively) in those cities.

WXYZ-TV is a partner in several charitable endeavors including the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul,[14] Operation Can Do and Detroit's annual children's immunization fair.

The program debuted in 1953 and was such a success that ABC moved production to Los Angeles in 1960 and aired the show nationally.

Other successful children's shows to follow would include Wyxie's Wonderland hosted by Detroit comic Marv Welch.

The station also helped to launch the career of Dennis Wholey, who started his AM Detroit talk show at WXYZ before going on to WTVS (channel 56) to host PBS Late Night.

The program was a pilot for other ABC-owned stations including those in New York and Chicago to launch their own Good Afternoon... shows.

WXYZ-TV also aired the Red Wings' 2002 Stanley Cup Finals series win, and the station provided local coverage of Super Bowl XL that was held at Ford Field.

[17] In 2011, WXYZ-TV replaced WWJ-TV as the new flagship of the Detroit Lions Television Network,[18] assuming broadcast rights to the team's over-the-air preseason game telecasts.

The station's news department started as a small operation, with short twice-a-weeknight updates anchored by previous staff announcer Lee McNew and longtime sportscaster Dave Diles.

ABC tried to apply Bonds' success in Detroit at KABC-TV in Los Angeles in the late 1960s and again in 1975 at New York City's WABC-TV; in both cases, he was unsuccessful and soon returned to WXYZ-TV.

WXYZ-TV's ratings dominance was challenged by WDIV-TV starting in the 1980s, due in part to a change of ownership and culture at WDIV and viewers looking for an alternative to Bonds' hard-hitting style of news presentation.

Smith also won acclaim for his award-winning series From the Heart which began in the late 1990s as a collection of heartwarming, historical and inspirational stories from around the Detroit area.

In 2006, WXYZ-TV also boasted the most veteran general assignment reporters in Detroit television with Cheryl Chodun, Bill Proctor, Mary Conway and Val Clark, each of whom worked at least 20 years at the station.

In the November 2006 ratings period, shortly after the switch to HD, all of WXYZ-TV's newscasts placed first in their respective timeslots except at 11 pm, which lagged behind WDIV-TV.

On August 3, 2011, WXYZ-TV unveiled a new news set during its noon newscast, a project which the station had been working on since June 2011.

[26] On June 16, 2014, WXYZ-TV introduced a new 10 p.m. newscast for its new sister station, WMYD, under the name of 7 Action News at 10 on TV 20 Detroit.

WXYZ-TV's third digital subchannel originally carried a video feed of the station's tower camera at Broadcast House.

[36][37] In addition to carriage across Southeast Michigan, WXYZ-TV is carried on most cable providers in Southwestern Ontario and Northwestern Ohio.

Coverage on cable systems outside the Detroit/Windsor market may be subject to syndication exclusivity rules and network blackouts in the United States and simsubbing in Canada.

Marie, Sudbury and Thunder Bay, Ontario, Saint John, New Brunswick, and all of Manitoba (except for areas served by Shaw's Steinbach or Winnipeg system, which carry WDAZ-TV out of Grand Forks, North Dakota, instead) and the National Capital Region.

Until April 2011, Comcast subscribers in Holly, which is located within the Detroit market in northwestern Oakland County, were unable to see much of WXYZ-TV's programming, as it was often blacked out at the request of Flint's WJRT-TV; the blackout was due to the Comcast system being tied to the Flint headend, instead of one in Oakland County or elsewhere in Detroit.