Under pressure to divest itself of the cross-ownership of the News and Piedmont, Multimedia traded WFBC-TV to the Pulitzer Publishing Company in 1983, and the call letters were changed to WYFF.

[12] In its early years, channel 4 was recognized for a variety of children's programs, including Kids Korral, Romper Room, and especially Monty's Rascals, which aired under that title from 1960 to 1978.

In 1975, the FCC moved to bar future acquisitions that created cross-ownership and ordered 16 such groups in small markets to break up their holdings, though others were allowed to remain grandfathered.

[17] Two years later, on March 1, 1977, a federal appeals court amplified the policy; instead of merely barring future purchases against the rule, it ordered the divestiture of all such pairings except those that were in the public interest.

The former two groups emphasized the unfamiliarity of the companies to their new markets, calling McClatchy "totally foreign" to upstate South Carolina and Multimedia "completely unknown to the Sacramento community".

[22] While the community organizations abandoned their opposition to the trade, San Joaquin Communications Corporation refused to yield, and the transaction reached its deadline date of March 1, 1978, without being adjudicated by the FCC.

It provided geographic diversity for both companies; Multimedia owned no stations west of the Mississippi River, and Pulitzer was seeking to reduce its dependence on the St. Louis economy.

[26] The transaction was filed with the FCC in December;[27] Pulitzer had to sell a television station to remain within ownership limits and chose to spin off WLNE-TV in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

[34] WFBC-TV started producing newscasts on its first full day on air, January 1, 1954; Norvin Duncan, a 14-year veteran of the WFBC radio staff, was the first news anchor for channel 4.

[13] Jim Phillips answered a blind advertisement and was hired as WFBC-TV's sports director in 1968; the job included announcing Clemson Tigers athletics.

[39] Jane Robelot, a former anchor of CBS This Morning and graduate of Clemson University, returned to Greenville in 2007 and became a contributing reporter for WYFF, focusing on human interest stories.

The first edition, "Paul's Gift", centered on the organs donated by a dying man and how they saved three lives;[41] it won a George Foster Peabody Award.

[53] As part of the SAFER Act, WYFF kept its analog signal on the air until July 12 to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a loop of public service announcements from the National Association of Broadcasters.