The station first signed on the air on May 14, 1948 as WBEN-TV. It was Buffalo's first television station, the fifth-oldest station in New York state, and the 24th in the United States. The station was originally owned by the Butler family, along with the Buffalo Evening News and WBEN radio (930 AM and 106.5 FM, now WTSS at 102.5); the holding company for the WBEN stations was WBEN, Inc. Its radio sister had been one of CBS Radio's first 16 affiliates when that network premiered in 1928, but by that point had switched networks to NBC Blue. Accordingly, channel 4 originally signed on as an NBC affiliate. WBEN-TV picked up CBS programming in January 1949, and has remained with that network ever since.
As the only station in Buffalo for its first several years, channel 4 also carried secondary affiliations with ABC and DuMont. It lost NBC when WGR-TV (channel 2, now WGRZ) signed on in August 1954, and ABC to WGR-TV when NBC moved its programs to newly purchased WBUF-TV (channel 17) in 1956. WBEN-TV continued to share DuMont programming with WGR-TV until 1956 when that network ceased operations. WBUF-TV gone dark in 1958, two months before the sign-on of present-day ABC affiliate WKBW-TV (channel 7).
1954–1959[]
1959-1966[]
1966–1968[]
1968–1975[]
1975
1975–1977[]
WIVB-TV[]
1977–1992[]
The new owner, whose company was called Howard Publications, Inc., changed channel 4's callsign to WIVB-TV (We're [Channel] IVBuffalo), on November 1, 1977, the day after Robert Howard purchased the station. The station introduced a new logo to go with the change.
1992–present[]
1992–2012[]
WIVB-TV was sold to LIN TV Corporation (which would later take the name LIN Media) in 1995.
WIVB-TV began broadcasting its newscasts in true high definition on February 1, 2012. It was the last of the television stations in the Buffalo market to upgrade its news programming to HD; WKBW-TV had done so in 2011, and WGRZ aired some HD content as early as February 2010. The 10 p.m. newscast on WNLO was included in the upgrade.
1Owns a 75% stake of the network, the other 12.5% stake is co-owned between Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery. 2Joint venture with Warner Bros. Discovery, in which Nexstar owns 31% while Warner Bros. Discovery owns the remaining 69%. 3Nexstar operates these stations owned by Mission Broadcasting. 4Nexstar operates this station owned by Cunningham Broadcasting. 5Nexstar operates this station owned by White Knight Broadcasting through an SSA. 6Nexstar operates this station owned by Vaughan Media. 7Predecessor company of LIN Media. 8Nexstar operates this station owned by Londen Media Group.
.jpg "WIVB-24 Hour News ID (1995).jpg (365 KB)")
.jpg "WIVB-TV 1998-2004 logo (news open).jpg (69 KB)"){kind=logo}
.svg "WIVB (2012, alternate).svg (8 KB)")
