WNAC-TV first went on the air as Boston's first TV station, on June 21, 1948.  The original owners of channel 7 were the Yankee Network, a radio group originally owned by the Shepherd Stores and managed by John Shepherd, a pioneer Radio broadcaster.

RKO General received its construction permit after World War II for channel 7, with studios in the Yankee Network headquarters at 21 Brookline Avenue in downtown Boston.  By the time channel 7 was about to go on the air, the Yankee Network had been sold to General Tire & Rubber, who wanted to enter broadcasting in a big way (they also purchased New York's WOR and other assorted stations). A few years later, after buying the RKO movie studio, General Tire rechristened their broadcasting division as RKO General, and that name will be used in the remainder of this article to refer to the ownership of Boston's channel 7 between 1948 and 1982.

RKO General was able to expand the 21 Brookline Avenue facilities for TV by converting the largest radio studio there (WNAC, 680 AM) to television, building an addition out of the back of the building (which at the time was a hotel) for additional space, and taking over vacant offices which had been empty since 1943, when WAAB, the Yankee Network's other AM station in Boston was moved to Worcester to comply with FCC duopoly rules of the time. A transmitter was set-up in Malden (just north of Boston) with an transmitting antenna atop an existing radio tower.

WNAC's first day on the air, coinciding with the opening day of the 1948 Republican Convention, the first political convention to receive widespread network TV coverage. nkee Network has the most comprehensive local and regional news coverage on Boston radio

Until September, 1953, the station's primary affiliation was the CBS television network, but had secondary affiliations with the ABC, and (now-defunct) DuMont television networks. From September, 1953 through November, 1957, WNAC's affiliations were only with CBS and NBC (the ABC contract was awarded to new-comer WHDH ( channel 5), which went on the air on November 26, 1957.  WNAC was to become WNEV amd then, WHDH (WHDH call letters were changed to coincide with new ownership to WCVB, on March 18, 1972.  From March 19, 1972 through January 1, 1995, the station was a CBS-only affiliate.  NBC replaced CBS as its affiliation on January 2, 1995.

In 1949, WNAC pioneered daytime television in Boston (on a daily basis), with two local programs: "Inter-Vues" with Bill Hahn (who in later years would leave the air and go behind-the-scenes as head of public affairs for the station at the end of RKO General's ownership) and "Shopping-Vues", a homemaker's show with Louise Morgan  (both Hahn and Morgan were with the Yankee Network on radio). Initially, both shows were preceded and followed by test patterns, but in time, the test patterns went away as the network broadcasting day expanded. Hahn's show would only run a few years, but Morgan's would run over a decade, enhancing her reputation as "New England's First Lady of Radio and Television."  Here's the WNAC--TV lineup for December 25, 1959.

During the early years, WNAC also aired local sports. From 1948 until 1954, it shared Red Sox baseball telecasts with WBZ (the rights were held by a  beer company who didn't want to show favoritism towards either station), and shared the old Braves with WBZ from 1948 through 1950 (WBZ got the exclusive Braves rights in 1951 and 1952; the team left town after the 1952 season to move to Milwaukee). WNAC also broadcast the first local pro hockey (Boston Bruins) and pro basketball (Boston Celtics) telecasts during the 1948-49 season, as well as college football games until the NCAA in 1951 signed an exclusive network TV deal that precluded most local telecasts of hometown college teams.

By 1953, WNAC was broadcasting with the maximum visual power allowed by the FCC of 316,000 watts, still from Malden.

Around 1960, WNAC's 11 P.M. newscast consisted simply of an announcer reading news while viewers saw "News," "Weather," and "Sports" slides on the screen!  But before long, due to competition from WHDH-TV and WBZ-TV, WNAC updated that show, to show an on-camera anchorman and film reports from reporters in the field.

Another change would be the end of Louise Morgan's daily TV show (she would continue on radio for several years), replaced at first by an interview show hosted by Heywood Vincent.

The most-successful show in the half-century history of Boston's channel 7 premiered in the fall of 1961: "The Major Mudd Show", hosted by Ed McDonnell in an astronaut costume (this was just as our nation's space program was getting off the ground). At first, McDonnell as Major Mudd introduced Three Stooges shorts and cartoons, but by 1963, the Stooges and cartoons were cut back (though they still appeared), a studio-audience of children was added, and comedy bits and games for the studio audience were added. "Major Mudd" would enjoy healthy ratings well into the 1970's, and is fondly remembered today by those who watched the show while they were youngsters.

Besides the affiliation switch of January 1st, 1961, perhaps the next biggest changes for WNAC during the 1960's were the replacement of the old Malden transmitter/antenna and the conversion from black-and-white to color broadcasting. In March of 1964, a new transmitter and tower were completed in Needham (a suburb just west of Boston; the city's other TV stations were already transmitting from there), and three years later, the old black-and-white cameras were replaced by color cameras. WNAC was, by the way, the last of Boston's "big three" VHF network affiliates to move their transmitter to Needham and convert to color. During RKO General's ownership, WNAC was often last of the three to do something.

Also remembered from that era was "Dialing For Dollars," hosted by Ed Miller, in which each weekday afternoon during the 1960's, a movie (WNAC had a ton of movies to pick from; its parent company RKO General owned the vast RKO Pictures movie library) would be interrupted from time-to-time so that Miller would call a viewer to ask if he/she knew how much money was in the jackpot ("Amount") and a code ("Count") given out during the show (example" Four from the Top").

For a brief time around 1969-70, Dave Garroway, the original host of the "Today" show, tried to make a comeback by hosting a daily talk-show on WNAC-TV, which the station hoped would be nationally syndicated. The show failed locally, and thus was never syndicated.

By the time of Garroway's short-lived comeback, WNAC had joined its radio sisters (now renamed WRKO-AM and WROR-FM) in moving from Brookline Avenue to a new building at 7 Bullfinch Place in Boston's Government Center.

As the 1970's dawned, there were storm clouds on the horizon. The FCC ruled that RKO General was unfit to be a TV station licensee (thanks to dealings by its parent, General Tire), and opened up the channel to competing applicants. Two such applicants, Dudley Stations and New England Television, later merged and became the primary challenger to RKO General.

A similar drama was being played out with the Boston Herald-Traveler, which owned channel 5. Stripped of its license, channel 5 was granted to a local group called Boston Broadcasters. CBS wanted nothing to do with the new channel 5 owners, so they approached channel 7 about resuming their affiliation relationship.

When ownership of channel 5 changed on March 19, 1972, WNAC again became a CBS affiliate with WCVB (the new channel 5) becoming the ABC station.

The year 1973 saw the premiere of the second most-successful show in the long history of Boston's channel 7: "Candelpins For Cash,". hosted by Bob Gamere. This hybrid of a bowling show (using the skinny "candlepins" and small balls popular in New England) and a game show premiered in the fall of 1973, and instantly dominated its 5:30 P.M. weekday timeslot. For a time in 1974, WNAC's 6 P.M. newscast zoomed up to the top of the ratings heap. But while a vast improvement over a few years earlier, WNAC still didn't have the depth in its news department that WBZ and WCVB had, so while "Candlepins" would remain popular through the rest of the 1970's; the 6 P.M. news couldn't hold its lead-in's huge audience, even after it was expanded in 1975 from a half-hour to an hour (again, the last of the "big three" Boston stations to expand their early-evening news to an hour).

WNAC actually beat out one of its competitors (WBZ) in getting live news minicams out on the streets of Boston in the summer of 1976 (WCVB had been first with minicams, two years earlier)---but only because a labor dispute precluded WBZ from putting its first minicams on the street for several months!

Another WNAC favorite of the 1970's was a live call-in talk show hosted by veteran Boston radio talkmaster Paul Benzaquin, which aired at 9 A.M.  Benzaquin presided over an interesting discussion of issues and interviews of famous personalities.

By 1978, in an attempt to settle the FCC license issue, Dudley Stations and New England Television merged (taking the name of the latter), and struck ] a deal with RKO General to buy WNAC for $ 59 million. But the FCC turned the proposed deal down, saying that RKO General did not own the  licensed for NETV to purchase.  Appeals finally ran out in the spring of 1982, and on May 18th of that year, ownership changed. The call letters were changed to WNEV-TV, but the  station remained a CBS affiliate.

That fall, WNEV made a major effort to beef-up its local newscasts by hiring numerous reporters (some of whom were lured away from WBZ and WCVB) and installing a "dream team" of news anchors--Tom Ellis (who had first made WBZ, then WCVB, number-one in the news ratings) and Robin Young (who, although having no hard-news experience, was well-known as onetime hostess of WBZ's "Evening Magazine"). Many in and out of the industry thought this combination plus WNEV's commitments to make their news department the equal of WBZ's and WCVB's, was to mean certain success for WNEV and at last, channel 7 wouldn't be third of three news stations.

But the "dream team" of high-paid anchors backfired. By 1986, both Ellis (now at New England Cable News) and Young had left the station.  Channel 7 would remain a distant third in the news ratings for more than another decade.

One of the earliest jobs for Matt Lauer, the current co-host of the "Today" show  was "Ready To Go," a daily children's show that aired in 1990 from 7 to 8 on weekday mornings (WNEV had gotten the go-ahead to delay the "CBS This Morning" show by an hour).  But the show flopped.

In 1991, NETV purchased WHDH radio, and the call letters were changed to WHDH-TV, which are still channel 7's call letters (as WHDH radio was sold  off a few years later and the call letters changed).

By 1993, NETV was in debt, and local programming had been cut back. Even local news had been cut a bit, and some were wondering if WNEV would even be able to continue to afford any local news coverage at all. NETV sold both WHDH radio and TV in 1993. The radio station dropped the WHDH call letters, but the TV station still has them.

The new owner of WHDH was Ed Ansin, who also owns WSVN in Miami. Ansin rebuilt the news department that had been partially decimated under the final months of NETV ownership, and would in time have the largest local TV news staff in New England.  But while Ansin increased WHDH's news department in size, equipment, and time on the air, many were stunned at what else was going on —  channel 7 news, which was once almost a clone of WBZ and WCVB, suddenly gained a faster pace and more "tabloid" stories. Many news anchors and reporters left WHDH, disgusted at the turn the station's news department had taken. One such departure was R.D. Sahl, who in his time at WHDH, had become a solid, respected, and dependable newsman, perhaps the strongest thing WHDH's news department had going for it.

In 1994, word arrived that WHDH would lose its CBS affiliation at the beginning of the new year to WBZ, whose parent company (Westinghouse) was in the process of buying out CBS. WHDH grabbed the NBC affiliation, which took effect January 2nd, 1995.