For many years, it has produced the coaches' shows for both the football and men's basketball teams, along with other shows about Ohio State athletics. The station has strong ties to the athletic department of the Ohio State University. produced using a production truck and transmission vehicle from NHK, Japan's national public broadcasting organization. It is widely considered the first ever live sporting event in HD in the U.S. however, as several other stations throughout the country also lay claim to this distinction, the veracity cannot be verified.

The station claims this to have been the first locally produced HD broadcast in the U.S. The first live high-definition broadcast on the station's digital signal took place in September 1998 in which the broadcast was a football game between Ohio State and West Virginia, making the station a pioneer in American digital television. WBNS also replaced Toledo CBS affiliate WTOL on cable television in the Lima DMA. The new Cleveland CBS affiliate, WOIO, unlike WBNS-TV, did not reach Mansfield with a Grade B signal. In 1995, WBNS-TV replaced Cleveland's WJW-TV as the default affiliate in the Mansfield area (part of the Cleveland– Akron DMA) after WJW became a Fox broadcast outlet. Several KNN kids have gone on to pursue careers in television news or public relations in central Ohio. Throughout much of the 1990s and early years of the millennium, WBNS-TV was home to the 10TV Kids News Network (KNN) a local show, 'produced by kids, for kids.' The half-hour show aired Saturday mornings. The station also featured ' Fritz the Nite Owl,' who hosted midnight movies during the 1970s, and the Sunday state government talk show called Capital Square in the 1990s. WBNS-TV was known for its locally produced shows Flippo the Clown, Luci's Toyshop, Franz the Toymaker, The Judge, and programs hosted by popular Columbus Zoo and Aquarium personality Jack Hanna ( Hanna's Ark). The Wolfe family, who purchased the Dispatch in 1905, sold the newspaper and related assets to New Media Investment Group in June 2015. The FCC has largely prohibited common ownership of co-located print and broadcast media since the mid-1970s. Channel 10 maintained common ownership with The Columbus Dispatch, the city's lone remaining daily newspaper and the 'N' in the station's call letters, until 2015 under an exemption of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s cross-ownership rules.

The WBNS call letters stand for 'Wolfe Bank Newspaper and Shoes', the businesses owned by the company's longtime owners, the Wolfe family. It is also one of only a few stations in the country to have had the same call letters and primary network affiliation throughout its history. Channel 10 has used the on-air branding of 10TV since 1977. It is currently the ninth longest-tenured CBS affiliate. WBNS radio had been a CBS Radio Network affiliate for almost 20 years, so channel 10 immediately joined the CBS television network. WBNS-TV began operations on October 5, 1949. WCMH-TV and most of Columbus' FM radio stations also broadcast from the candelabra tower. Former WBNS-TV broadcast tower (left), next to the candelabra tower from which WBNS-TV and WBNS-FM now broadcast.

Channel 10 columbus ohio