The station signed on November 1, 1957, as WINR-TV, the area's second television station, and aired an analog signal on
UHF channel 40. The station was originally owned by the then-
Rochester-based
Gannett Company, which purchased the station's
construction permit along with
NBC Radio Network affiliate
WINR (680 AM) in January of that year. The WINR stations were part of a
newspaper-broadcast combination owned by Gannett in Binghamton, operating alongside the
Binghamton Press. Upon its purchase of WINR, the
Press went to work towards completing the construction of channel 40, and used its pages to educate readers on how to receive the new UHF signal. At its sign-on, WINR-TV was primarily an
NBC television affiliate, though it also carried some
ABC programming before WBJA-TV (channel 34, now
WIVT) went on the air in 1962. Gannett announced on July 30, 1970, that it would sell its Binghamton broadcasting interests, while retaining the
Binghamton Press.
Broadcast tower manufacturer Stainless, Inc. acquired WINR-TV as part of this divestiture. Upon receiving approval of the sale, the station changed its call letters to the current WICZ-TV (for company owner Henry Guzewicz) on April 7, 1971. That fall, the station moved to an tower on Ingraham Hill; it had previously shared a transmitter location with WINR radio. WICZ already had a secondary affiliation with Fox to carry
Fox Kids, the network regained an over-the-air affiliate in Binghamton a year later when WETM's owners,
Smith Broadcasting, purchased WBGH-LP (channel 8, now
WBGH-CD channel 20) and made it a semi-satellite of WETM. Stainless, whose holdings by this point included its tower manufacturing business, WICZ-TV, and
KTVZ in
Bend, Oregon, was sold to
Northwest Broadcasting for $17 million in 1997. Though Northwest would sell the Stainless tower company to SpectraSite Holdings in 1999, it would still own WICZ under the Stainless Broadcasting name. During the late 1990s, WICZ added a secondary affiliation with
UPN; in 2000, Northwest bought W10CO (channel 10), changed its call letters to
WBPN-LP, and moved UPN programming there. On September 16, 2013, it was announced that
Mission Broadcasting would acquire WICZ-TV and WBPN-LP from Stainless Broadcasting. Upon the deal's completion, the stations' operations would have been taken over by
Nexstar Broadcasting Group, making them sister stations to WIVT and WBGH-CA. Stainless withdrew the license assignment application on March 18, 2015, following the deal's cancellation. In February 2019,
Reuters reported that
Apollo Global Management had agreed to acquire the entirety of Brian Brady's television portfolio, which it intended to merge with
Cox Media Group (which Apollo is acquiring at the same time) and stations spun off from
Nexstar Media Group's purchase of
Tribune Broadcasting, once the purchases were approved by the FCC. In March 2019 filings with the FCC, Apollo confirmed that its newly-formed broadcasting group, Terrier Media, would acquire Northwest Broadcasting, with Brian Brady holding an unspecified minority interest in Terrier. In June 2019, it was announced that Terrier Media would instead operate as Cox Media Group, as Apollo had reached a deal to also acquire Cox's radio and advertising businesses. The transaction was completed on December 17. On March 29, 2022, Cox Media Group announced it would sell WICZ-TV and 17 other stations to
Imagicomm Communications, an affiliate of the parent company of the
INSP cable channel, for $488 million; the sale was completed on August 1.{{Cite web|url=https://www.tvtechnology.com/news/cox-media-group-insp-close-deal-for-sale-of-cox-tv-stations-to-imagicomm|title=Cox Media Group, INSP Close Deal for Sale of Cox TV Stations to Imagicomm ==News operation==