WTTE

In 1996, Sinclair merged with River City Broadcasting, owner of WSYX. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules at the time did not allow one person to own two stations in a single market. Sinclair kept the longer-established WSYX and nominally sold WTTE to Glencairn, Ltd. owned by former Sinclair executive Edwin Edwards. However, nearly all of Glencairn's stock was held by the Smith family, founders and owners of Sinclair. In effect, Sinclair still owned WTTE, and now had a duopoly in Columbus in violation of FCC rules. Sinclair and Glencairn further circumvented the rules by moving WTTE's operations into WSYX's Dublin Road studios under a local marketing agreement, with WSYX as senior partner. Glencairn owned ten other stations—all in markets where Sinclair also had a station. Sinclair was eventually fined $40,000 for its illegal control of Glencairn. The two companies attempted to merge in 2001 after the FCC allowed duopolies. However, the FCC would not allow Sinclair to repurchase WTTE. The FCC does not allow duopolies between two of the four highest-rated stations in a single market. Also the Columbus market, despite its relatively large size, has only seven full-power stations—too few to legally permit a duopoly. WTTE thus remained under the banner of Glencairn, which was then renamed Cunningham Broadcasting. However, the Smith family still controls nearly all of Cunningham's stock, so Sinclair still effectively has a duopoly in Columbus. By nearly all accounts, Sinclair has used Glencairn/Cunningham as a shell corporation to evade FCC ownership rules.

In 2000, WWHO switched its affiliation to UPN, but signed a deal with The WB to retain its programming on a secondary basis through what a Paramount Stations Group executive described as a "program license agreement."[1] As a result, WTTE picked up half of Kids' WB!'s weekday programming and aired it alongside their usual Fox Kids programming. This arrangement continued until 2001.

In 2006, all Sinclair-controlled Fox affiliates including WTTE extended their affiliation contracts until at least March 2012. WTTE-DT2 was formerly an affiliate of The Tube, a 24-hour digital music channel. Like other Sinclair-owned stations, this was dropped in January 2007, due to a disagreement between Sinclair and The Tube over E/I programming. The network ceased operations that October due to the lack of advertising.

According to Nielsen Media Research in the May 2011 ratings period, WTTE was the second most watched Fox affiliate in the United States in prime time. The station remains intensely competitive in the Columbus television market with it remaining an extremely strong competitor against WBNS-TV and WCMH-TV averaging roughly 300,000 viewers each night during the station's 10 o'clock newscast despite its earlier time slot. WTTE typically wins the demographic viewership battle each and every ratings period. The demographic win is a much sought after attribute for television sales associates in the area for local advertising purposes.

On October 18, 2010, the station reactivated their 28.2 digital subchannel for the first time since December 2006, with theCoolTV, a music video network which, unlike The Tube, had E/I programming pre-inserted as part of their national schedule. The network was discontinued as of August 31, 2012.

WTTE was also considered an alternate ABC affiliate airing that network's programs when WSYX is unable to do so such as during a breaking news emergency or local special.

On May 15, 2012, Sinclair and Fox agreed to a five-year extension to the network's affiliation agreement with the 19 Fox stations owned or controlled by Sinclair, including WTTE, allowing them to continue carrying the network's programming through 2017.[2]

On June 23, 2014, Sinclair signed a deal with Sony Pictures Entertainment to carry the GetTV network as a subchannel on 33 of their stations;[3] WTTE was one such station, and the 28.2 subchannel was reactivated.

On June 1, 2017, Sinclair replaced GetTV with TBD on WTTE's 28.2 subchannel. TBD is operated by Sinclair Television Group, a subsidiary of Sinclair Broadcast Group.

On August 21, 2017, WTTE's 28.3 subchannel began carriage of Stadium, which replaced ASN (American Sports Network).

On January 7, 2021, Sinclair began simulcasting WTTE's main signal onto WSYX 6.3, as part of Columbus' adoption of ATSC 3.0. The next day, Sinclair announced that WSYX was now a dual ABC/Fox affiliate while WTTE was now a primary affiliate of Sinclair-owned TBD (moving over from 28.2), quietly moving WTTE's intellectual property including its main programming and Fox affiliation to WSYX permanently.[4] WTTE thus became the third station to have TBD as a primary affiliate and the fourth Sinclair-controlled station to have one of Sinclair's netlets as a primary affiliate, joining fellow TBD affiliates WXBU in Lancaster, Pennsylvania (serving Harrisburg) and KENV-DT in Elko, Nevada (a submarket of the Salt Lake City market), and Stadium affiliate KTXD-TV in Greenville, Texas (serving Dallas–Fort Worth); like WTTE, all of the aforementioned stations except KTXD-TV once had a primary affiliation with a major network.

Although WTTE's Fox affiliation officially moved to WSYX on January 7, WTTE continued to air Fox programming on 28.1 for a transitional period for over-the-air users to get used to Fox programming on 6.3 until February 3, 2021 at 10 AM, after which WTTE ended its simulcast with WSYX 6.3 (and officially ending its broadcasting of Fox programming after 35 years) and broadcast TBD on its main signal, making room for the ATSC 3.0 signals for WSYX (6.1 and 6.3), WWHO and WCMH-TV.[5] Simultaneous with the move, Stadium was moved to 28.2 and 28.3 went dark.

Much like other situations where Sinclair has merged two separately-licensed signals onto one, WTTE's intellectual property will still identify with the on-air branding of "Fox 28", but will now identify with the WSYX call sign for station identification purposes instead of WTTE. The change did not affect pay TV users, though it is not known if Sinclair modified its retransmission consent agreement with area TV providers to air WSYX 6.3 instead of WTTE after February 3 on its basic tier. It is expected that TBD programming would now air on the basic tier alongside WSYX 6.3 after that date.

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

WTTE was one of only two full-power television stations in the Columbus market (the other being WWHO) that honored the original DTV transition date of February 17, 2009. The station shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 28, at 11:59 p.m. on that date, as part of the federally mandated transition from analog to digital television.[7] The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 36, using PSIP to display WTTE's virtual channel as 28 on digital television receivers.

However, until March 3, as part of the SAFER Act,[8] analog channel 28 aired a repeating loop of a short informational film (in both English and Spanish) about the DTV changeover and how to upgrade to digital television. Analog channel 28 has since gone dark.