The station first signed on the air on January 1, 1956, as WREC-TV, and began regular broadcasts the following day on January 2. It was originally owned by electrical engineer and radio dealer Hoyt Wooten (who had applied for one of the first television licenses in the country in 1928), along with WREC radio (
600 AM and 102.7 FM, now
WEGR). The call letters stood for Wooten's radio store, the Wooten Radio-Electric Company, where he had founded WREC radio in 1922. It took the CBS affiliation from
WHBQ-TV (channel 13, which had been a CBS affiliate since it started in September 1953), as WREC-AM had been a CBS Radio affiliate since 1929. WREC-TV's original studios were located inside the
Peabody Hotel, a noted tourist attraction, in downtown Memphis. For its first six years, WREC-TV was the only locally owned station in Memphis (WHBQ-TV was owned by
General Tire and
NBC affiliate
WMC-TV was owned by
Scripps-Howard). However, in 1963, Wooten sold WREC-AM-FM-TV to
Cowles Communications, earning a handsome return on his original investment of 40 years earlier. In turn, Cowles sold WREC-TV to
The New York Times Company in 1971, marking their first foray into television broadcasting outside of its home city in
New York City. Cowles later sold the radio stations to other interests. Four years later, the Times Company built new studio facilities for WREG on one of the highest points on
Chickasaw Bluff, overlooking the
Mississippi River. The station had long since outgrown the Peabody Hotel, and management felt that building a new studio near the Mississippi would be appropriate since Memphis has long been identified with the river. On March 2, 1975, channel 3 signed off from the Peabody Hotel for the last time, and returned to the air 45 minutes later from the new studios on Channel 3 Drive. The move also saw the station slightly modify its call sign to WREG-TV. Years later, the station also maintained studio space in the
Peabody Place shopping center, adjacent to the Peabody Hotel, marking a partial return of sorts to the WREC-TV years. However, the studio was shut down in 2011 when Peabody Place closed. On September 12, 2006, The New York Times Company announced its intention to sell its nine television stations. On January 4, 2007, the company entered into an agreement with
private equity group Oak Hill Capital Partners to sell the stations to the Oak Hill-operated holding company
Local TV, the sale was finalized on May 7. On July 1, 2013, Local TV announced that it would sell its stations to
Tribune Broadcasting (which formed a management company that operated both Tribune and Local TV's stations in 2008) for $2.75 billion. The sale was completed on December 27.
Aborted sale to Sinclair; sale to Nexstar Sinclair Broadcast Group entered into an agreement to acquire Tribune Media on May 8, 2017, for $3.9 billion, plus the assumption of $2.7 billion in Tribune debt. The deal received significant scrutiny over Sinclair's forthrightness in its applications to sell certain conflict properties, prompting the FCC to designate it for hearing and leading Tribune to terminate the deal and sue Sinclair for
breach of contract. Following the Sinclair deal's collapse,
Nexstar Media Group of
Irving, Texas, announced its purchase of Tribune Media on December 3, 2018, for $6.4 billion in cash and debt. As Nexstar already owned
ABC affiliate
WATN-TV (channel 24) and
CW affiliate
WLMT (channel 30), the company agreed on March 20, 2019, to divest the WATN/WLMT duopoly to
Tegna Inc. as part of a series of transactions with multiple companies that totaled $1.32 billion. The sale was completed on September 19, 2019.
Nexstar acquired Tegna for $6.2 billion in a deal announced in August 2025 and completed on March 19, 2026. The deal included approval for Nexstar to own three full-power station licenses in markets such as Memphis. A
temporary restraining order issued one week later by the
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, later escalated to a preliminary injunction, has prevented WATN and WLMT from being integrated into WREG. ==Programming==