By 1975, WNJU-TV and most of the major stations in New York had moved their transmitters to the World Trade Center, but W62AA remained at the Empire State Building to expand its signal farther north of the city and the surrounding area.

W62AA was taken off the air in 1983; that year, a construction permit for a full-power television station in Kingston, New York, was issued to a group led by Albany-area businessman Edward Swyer.

However, by virtue of the outer range of its signal, WTZA also served the Capital District, and the northern suburbs of New York City.

The station also ran a small news operation, led by former CNN executive producer Gerry Harrington, which was relatively successful given the underserved nature of its coverage area.

[5] His oldest son, Richard French III, was appointed as WTZA's general manager and would eventually become the face of the station.

The news product, however, was tilted with a lean towards the French family's home base of Westchester County, and a philosophical shift to the left.

Richard French III, WRNN's general manager, news director, and host of a nightly call-in talk program, had been active in the New York state Democratic party prior to his father's purchase of WTZA.

WRNN opened a studio in Manhattan and was successful in getting its evening news shows simulcast on a low-power station there, though it was mostly an effort to gain must-carry coverage on local cable.

It would take a few more years before WRNN would appear on New York City cable, and as part of satellite provider DirecTV's local station package.

By February 2017, the station aired a combination of regional and international news, including Richard French Live, and Newsline, the English-language newscast of Japanese public broadcaster NHK.

[6] In August 2019, Verizon announced that it would not renew its contract with RNN to produce the network's news programming; as a result, FiOS1 ceased operations on November 13, 2019, two days earlier than originally planned.

French stated the decision was his own and that he "can't continue to give the time that this program and the viewer deserve," though without mention of the ShopHQ agreement that would now overlay the station's entire broadcast day.

[15] the deal was terminated in August in favor of a $55 million bid for ShopHQ by IV Brands, owned by Manoj Bhargava.

In January 2007, it was announced that WRNN and The Journal News would partner to create a two-hour "daily in-depth newscast" titled Newscenter Now beginning in mid-March 2007.

The newscast was broadcast from WRNN's Rye Brook studios and aired weeknights from 5 to 7 p.m. Its main anchors were Christa Lauri, Andrew Whitman, Stacy Ann Gooden and Ben Sosenko.

[17] Newscenter Now was dropped after the September 27, 2008, broadcast; it was replaced with syndicated programming and the locally produced Real Politics Live.

On March 6, 2007, WRNN agreed to an affiliation contract with the Funimation Channel, a network which broadcasts Japanese anime cartoons, to run its programming on digital subchannel 48.3.