Early years (1977–1986) The station first signed on the air on October 10, 1977, as WXNE-TV (standing for "Christ (X) in New England"); originally operating as an
independent station, it was founded by the then–
Portsmouth, Virginia–based
Christian Broadcasting Network. After being awarded a
construction permit to build the station from the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in June 1972, CBN targeted the new channel 25 to begin operations within one year. However, various delays in obtaining both a studio and transmitter location resulted in a wait of over five years for the station to finally sign-on. WXNE-TV's early programming format was targeted at a family audience, consisting of older syndicated reruns and a decent amount of
religious programming—including CBN's flagship show,
The 700 Club, hosted by the ministry's founder
Pat Robertson. Religious programs ran for about six hours a day during the week, and throughout the day on Sundays. The station also carried the daily and Sunday
Mass from the
Boston Catholic Television Center.
Secular programming consisted of
westerns, older
movies, family-oriented
drama series, old
film shorts, and classic television series. For several years under CBN ownership, Tim Robertson served as the station's program director, appointed by his father, Pat Robertson. The station began adding more cartoons,
made-for-TV movies, and off-network sitcoms and family dramas during the early 1980s. Most notably, in 1980, WXNE took over production of the weekday bowling program
Candlepins for Cash, which had just been canceled by
CBS affiliate
WNAC-TV (channel 7, now
WHDH) after seven seasons. With new host
Rico Petrocelli, the show moved production from WNAC-TV's studios, in bowling lanes that were built in the basement of the facility, to the now-defunct
Wal-Lex Lanes in
Waltham. After only a few months as host, Petrocelli was ousted in favor of the program's original host when it aired on WNAC-TV,
Bob Gamere, who remained on
Candlepins until it ended its run on channel 25 in 1983. During this time, the station rebranded itself as "Boston 25", as it converted into a true independent. While the station was carried only on cable providers in the
Greater Boston market, WXNE-TV held a solid third place among the area's independent stations, behind the longer-established
WSBK-TV (channel 38) and
WLVI-TV (channel 56), and sixth in the
ratings among the market's commercial television stations. In April 1986, WXNE and the other two CBN-owned stations—
KXTX-TV in
Dallas and WYAH-TV (now
WGNT) in Portsmouth—were put up for sale. That August,
News Corporation announced that it would purchase channel 25, with plans to make it an
owned-and-operated station of its
Fox Broadcasting Company. Fox had been in preliminary negotiations to secure an affiliation with either WSBK or WLVI, but ended its pursuit of both outlets. Until the sale was completed, channel 25, upon the Fox network's startup on October 9, 1986, did not air the network's inaugural program and what was then its lone offering,
The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers, a late-night talk show that aired opposite
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson on
NBC. The outgoing CBN ownership believed that the program did not fit its strict content guidelines. Fox instead contracted Boston radio station WMRE (1510 AM, now
WMEX) to carry the audio portion of
The Late Show in the interim.
As WFXT (1987–present) When the sale to News Corporation was completed on
December 31, 1986, WXNE-TV, renamed WFXT on January 19, 1987, became the seventh Fox-owned property and the first to be acquired separately from News Corporation's 1986 purchase of
Metromedia's six television stations that served as the foundation for the new network. Besides adding
The Late Show to the schedule, airings of
The 700 Club were cut to once a day, and the daily broadcast of the Roman Catholic Mass was moved to an earlier timeslot. The station also began airing the syndicated, Fox-produced tabloid magazine
A Current Affair on weeknights; WFXT was the second station, after producing station and Fox flagship
WNYW in
New York City, to air the program. WXNE staff announcer Chris Clausen had already been let go in late 1986 (promptly joining WNEV-TV in January 1987) in favor of the services of Fox affiliate voiceover
Beau Weaver, who would remain with both the station and
Fox Television Stations for over a decade. The station's schedule, however, was largely unchanged at the outset, aside from the removal of several older sitcoms that soon resurfaced on WQTV (channel 68, now
WBPX-TV). The Sunday evening religious program block was finally discontinued on April 5, 1987, when Fox launched its prime time lineup, which initially aired only on Sundays before expanding to Saturdays that July (as such, WFXT is the only Boston television station that has never changed its network affiliation, as it has been with Fox since the network's prime time expansion; it wasn't until 1993 that Fox had programming on all seven days of the week). Over the next few years, WFXT, for the most part was unable to acquire the better syndicated programs and continued to only acquire shows that WSBK, WLVI, and the market's network affiliates passed on. In addition to Fox programming, most of the shows added to WFXT's schedule were low-budget, first-run syndicated programs and
cartoons. However, in 1988, the station did manage to buy two popular weekday syndicated shows away from WNEV—
Hollywood Squares (the then-current
John Davidson version) and
Entertainment Tonight—when the CBS affiliate phased them off its schedule, due to other programming commitments. WFXT aired
Squares through its 1989 cancellation; it carried
ET weeknights at 7 p.m., as the lead-in to
A Current Affair, until selling the show back to WHDH-TV (the former WNEV) in 1990. WFXT has again aired
ET since 2015.
Sale to the Boston Celtics As the FCC prohibited the
common ownership of a television station and a newspaper in the same market, in purchasing channel 25, News Corporation had to apply for and was granted a temporary waiver in order to retain WFXT and the newspaper it had also published, the
Boston Herald. On April 21, 1988,
Rupert Murdoch, who had earlier stated his intention to retain the
Herald, announced that WFXT would be put up for sale. In 1989, Fox proposed placing WFXT in a trust company as it sought to find a buyer willing to meet its $35 million asking price; on April 26, the FCC ruled that the trust would be required to sever all of the station's ties to Fox, including the network affiliation. That September, Fox agreed to sell the station to the
Boston Celtics' ownership group for $20 million; the sale was completed on May 11, 1990. As part of the deal, News Corporation was given the opportunity to eventually buy back a 37.5-percent stake in the station. The Celtics made WFXT the
NBA team's
flagship station starting with the
1990–91 season, following the expiration of its existing contract with WLVI-TV. The station also gained a radio sister station, as the Celtics also purchased WEEI (then at 590 AM, now
WEZE; now at
850 AM) at the same time. The Celtics did not have the financial means to compete as a broadcaster. Nonetheless, under Celtics ownership, WFXT finally began to acquire stronger programming, becoming a serious competitor to WSBK and WLVI for the first time. In 1990, among securing the rights to several new, high-profile rerun syndication packages, WFXT managed to buy rights to
The Cosby Show, reruns of which had been airing on
WCVB-TV (channel 5) for the past two years. WCVB, which had lost a lot of money airing
The Cosby Show in weekend blocks only, retained a small portion of the show's syndication rights for weekends and occasional airings in prime time (in the event that they chose to preempt an ABC network program). WFXT, meanwhile, began airing
Cosby Show reruns on weekdays in the fall of 1990; aside from a couple of years off between 1994 and 1996,
The Cosby Show would remain a staple of WFXT's schedule for well over a decade.
Return to Fox ownership By 1992, WFXT was carried on many cable providers in areas of New England where there was no locally-based Fox affiliate station. Locally, however, the station was still rated in third place (though not as distant as the CBN or early Fox days), behind WSBK and WLVI. Still, for a while under the Celtics' watch, WFXT was perceived to be in danger of losing its Fox affiliation. As early as March 1993, Fox was again considering the purchase of a Boston television station, even though News Corporation still owned the
Boston Herald, and entered into preliminary discussions with Boston Celtics Communications about reacquiring WFXT; the Celtics subsequently said, in a filing with the
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), that Fox had warned the company that it could pull its affiliation from the station if it were to acquire another property in the market. By this point, Fox held a 25-percent convertible interest in WFXT, and indicated it was seeking to expand this interest. News Corporation sold the newspaper to its publisher, Pat Purcell, in February 1994, clearing the way for a potential purchase of WFXT. The Celtics also moved their games off their own station, shifting the team's over-the-air broadcast rights to WSBK-TV in a five-year deal that began with the
1993–94 season; this move followed WFXT's increasing difficulty in scheduling Celtics telecasts around the Fox lineup. WFXT's Fox affiliation again came into question in 1994, in the wake of the network's
affiliation deal with twelve
New World Communications stations, when reports emerged that then-CBS affiliate WHDH-TV was considering a switch to Fox. After
Westinghouse Broadcasting signed a deal that July to affiliate all of its stations, including
WBZ-TV (channel 4), with CBS, WHDH was given the opportunity to choose between Fox and the NBC affiliation being vacated by WBZ; it elected to sign with NBC in August 1994, keeping Fox on WFXT. On October 5, 1994, Fox announced it would exercise its purchase option and buy WFXT. That November, the deal, as well as Fox's concurrent purchase of
WTXF in Philadelphia, encountered objections from NBC, alleging that Fox's interest in
SF Broadcasting, in connection with the Boston and Philadelphia purchases, would put Fox over the FCC's 12-station ownership limit; NBC subsequently filed a separate petition concerning Fox's ties to the then-Australian-based News Corporation. NBC withdrew its petitions on February 17, 1995, allowing Fox to retake control of channel 25 on July 7. As the 1990s progressed, WFXT began phasing in more talk and reality programs. It continued running cartoons (including the
Fox Kids block) each weekday—later becoming the last station in the market that had run a morning children's program block—and sitcoms during the evening hours. WFXT served as the television flagship of the
Boston Red Sox for three seasons from
2000 to
2002 (before that and since then, WFXT only carried Red Sox games that were
televised by Fox itself, including games from its four
World Series victories in
2004,
2007,
2013, and
2018). In the fall of 2001,
WPXT (which served as the over-the-air Fox affiliate for the
Portland area since the network launched) disaffiliated from Fox due to a payment dispute between Pegasus Broadcasting (the station's owner at the time) and the network. This left Portland and the entire state of Maine without a Fox affiliate until then-
Pax TV affiliate
WMPX-TV switched to the network in April 2003; during this time, WFXT served as the default Fox affiliate for the New Hampshire side of the Portland market, while
Foxnet provided the network's programming throughout Maine. At one point in 2006, the station was "tentatively planning" to carry programming from News Corporation-owned
MyNetworkTV (a sister network to Fox) on weekdays from 1 to 3 p.m. if the new network was unable to find an affiliate in the Boston market. On July 21, 2006, News Corporation announced that
Derry, New Hampshire–based WZMY-TV (channel 50, now
WWJE-DT) would become the market's MyNetworkTV affiliate when the network began operations on September 5, 2006. Channel 50 ended its affiliation with MyNetworkTV in September 2011, shortly after changing call letters to WBIN-TV; WSBK (a
CBS-owned sister station to WBZ-TV that had shunned the network at its formation) took over the affiliation at that time. Before MyNetworkTV became a programming service consisting solely of reruns, WFXT occasionally promoted that network's programming. On October 12, 2007,
Comcast began blacking out Fox prime time and sports programming from WFXT on its systems in
Bristol County due to an invocation of the FCC's network non-duplication rule by
WNAC-TV, the Fox affiliate in
Providence, Rhode Island, leaving only channel 25's syndicated programs and newscasts available in that area. On July 31, 2008,
Charter Communications' system in
Westport also became subject to the blackouts, this contributed to WFXT's eventual removal from that system on September 23, 2008.
Trade to Cox Media Group On June 24, 2014, Fox announced that it would trade WFXT and
Memphis sister station
WHBQ-TV to the
Cox Media Group, in exchange for the
San Francisco duopoly of Fox affiliate
KTVU and independent station
KICU-TV. The trade was completed on October 8, 2014. Following this deal, CBS-owned WBZ-TV and Telemundo-owned
WNEU briefly became the only network O&O stations in the Boston area (prior to the launch of
NBC Boston in January 2017), and also made WFXT the largest Fox affiliate not owned by the network (prior to the completion of the swap, KTVU held that title). In November 2014, shortly after the closure of the sale, WFXT was briefly pulled from
Verizon FiOS in the Boston area for a week due to a discrepancy in contract negotiations. On October 27, 2015, WFXT dropped the Fox O&O-style branding and introduced a new logo and on-air appearance; the logo was criticized by some viewers for its simplified appearance—omitting the standard Fox network logo in favor of an italicized
Helvetica logotype—and received national attention when Larry Potash, anchor of the
Morning News on
WGN-TV in
Chicago, criticized the change as a move by station-hired consultants to help bring in viewers who defected from WFXT's newscasts following the departure of longtime evening anchor Maria Stephanos earlier that year (Stephanos would join WCVB-TV in 2016). Prior to
Super Bowl LI in February 2017, the station began downplaying the Fox name from its overall branding; this was reflected in a promo that aired prior to and during the game (which itself used the same music, tagline, and overall format as a 2014 image promotion made by
Australia's
Seven Network) that referred to the news operation as "
25 News". On April 13, 2017, the station announced that it would rebrand its newscasts as
Boston 25 News on April 24, 2017; from then on, the "Fox 25" branding was retained as a generalized identity restricted to WFXT's entertainment programming and station promotions (the move followed a similar split branding structure that Cox Media Group employed when it operated KTVU as a Fox affiliate between 1986 and 2014, in which references to the Fox network were omitted from use within that station's local news programs). General manager Tom Raponi told
The Boston Globe that the change was made to eliminate a perception that WFXT's newscasts leaned
conservative, which the station attributed to an internal survey taken in 2015 in which 41% of Boston area news viewers that were polled associated its newscasts with the national
Fox News Channel, rather than its sister broadcast network (as an affiliate of the Fox Broadcasting Company, WFXT's only association with Fox News is through a compulsory content arrangement with Fox News Edge, which supplies national and international news footage, and reports from FNC correspondents to Fox stations for potential but not mandatory inclusion in their local newscasts). In February 2018, the station dropped the "Fox 25" branding entirely and began referring to itself as "Boston 25" full time, including in promotions for syndicated and Fox network programming, making WFXT one of only a handful of Fox affiliates that does not use "Fox" in its branding.
Sale to Apollo Global Management In February 2019, it was announced that
Apollo Global Management would acquire Cox Media Group and
Northwest Broadcasting's stations. Although the group planned to operate under the name Terrier Media, it was later announced in June 2019 that Apollo would also acquire Cox's radio and advertising businesses, and retain the Cox Media Group name. The sale was completed on December 17, 2019.
Canceled sale to Standard General On February 22, 2022, as part of
Standard General's acquisition of
Tegna Inc., as well as Cox Media Group's acquisition of the four
Standard Media television stations, along with
WFAA,
KMPX,
KVUE,
KHOU and
KTBU, Cox announced that it would sell WFXT to an affiliate of Standard General. The deal was canceled on May 22, 2023. == Programming ==