The station was founded as WATU on May 16, 1997, but then changed its
call letters to the current WCVI-TV that same year on June 30, as an affiliate of the United Paramount Network (
UPN). The
WATU calls were previously used by the now-defunct
NBC affiliate in
Augusta, Georgia from the station's sign on from 1968 to 1981. Before then, UPN programming was seen
via satellite from
New York City's
WWOR-TV. At one point, the station also carried
Urban America Television as a secondary affiliation; this arrangement was discontinued when that network ceased operations on May 1, 2006. That September, WCVI joined
The CW following the shutdown of both UPN and
The WB.
On April 17, 2014, Virgin Blue reached a deal to sell WCVI-TV to LeSEA Broadcasting Corporation (now
Family Broadcasting Corporation); the sale was completed on July 27, 2014, with LeSEA assuming ownership on July 28, 2014.[5] Upon acquisition, WCVI dropped its CW programming in exchange for programs from LeSEA and World Harvest. It was unknown where CW network programming will be carried in the U.S. Virgin Islands at the time of the transaction becoming final, but CW programming is seen on cable channel 13 via
WSEE-DT2 in
Erie, Pennsylvania.
WCVI-DT2 serves as the ABC affiliate for the Virgin Islands since the network ended its affiliation with
WSVI-TV at the end of 2015. At the time, ABC announced that WCVI would become its new affiliate for the territory, although station management denied any knowledge of such an arrangement.[6] ABC programming duly began in 2016, however, as WCVI-DT2 began relaying a feed of
WENY-TV in
Elmira, New York provided to the area by
Lilly Broadcasting; non-network timeslots are filled by paid programming and Lilly's One Caribbean Television.[7]
On September 10, 2019, WCVI was sold to Lilly Broadcasting for $85,000, pending approval of the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC).[1] The sale allows Lilly to invoke
must-carry rules on local cable and satellite providers, avoiding a potential repeat of notorious carriage disputes with
Dish Network and
DirecTV in 2017.[7] The sale was completed on November 5, 2019.[2] Lilly also announced that its
CBS feed for the market, previously only available on cable via a separate feed of
Erie, Pennsylvania affiliate
WSEE-TV, would move to WCVI-DT1 on November 20.[3] It was the first time in three years that the U.S. Virgin Islands had one of the "Big Four" networks carried on their primary channels on a full-power TV station since WSVI-TV switched from ABC to Ion Television on December 31, 2015.