WIVB online - Television live

WIVB Live Stream

WIVB - News 4 Buffalo - is the CBS affiliate of Buffalo, New York: the city's first television station, on the air since 14 May 1948 and named for its virtual channel 4. Owned by Nexstar Media Group and paired with CW sister station WNLO, it broadcasts from studios on Elmwood Avenue in North Buffalo, and its newscasts also stream live online.

The station is western New York's news leader, producing 37 hours of locally originated newscasts each week - more than any other station in the Buffalo market - between CBS's national schedule and Buffalo Bills football in season.

News 4 Newscasts and the Snowbelt Weather Desk

The day begins with Wake Up!, the morning newscast launched in 1994 as the market's first seven-day morning show, and runs through midday, early-evening and late-night editions; The 10 O'Clock News, produced for sister station WNLO since 2001, has led its time slot virtually ever since. With roots in a newspaper family - the station was built by the owners of the Buffalo Evening News - the newsroom has long favored a straight, fact-forward newscast.

The weather operation is an institution within the institution: chief meteorologist Todd Santos leads a team that includes Mike Cejka, on Buffalo television since 1983, and News 4's lake-effect snow coverage becomes a regional lifeline when the storms park over the snowbelt for days. The station once ran more than eighty school-based weather stations as its Neighborhood WeatherNet and signed on with the New York State Mesonet network in 2020.

Lead anchor Jacquie Walker held the desk from 1984 until 2024, the longest continuous anchor run in Buffalo television history, and continues as a senior correspondent on a news team that has won multiple Emmy Awards.

Bills Football and CBS Programming

As Buffalo's CBS station, WIVB carries the network's national programming and the NFL's Sunday afternoon package - home of Buffalo Bills AFC games since 1998, with Bills preseason broadcasts added in 2021 under a regional deal with Nexstar - plus select games of the Buffalo Bandits, the National Lacrosse League team whose broadcasts are shared with WNLO. The only local non-news program on the schedule is the long-running public-affairs program By the People, a Sunday-morning staple for decades.

From WBEN-TV to Nexstar

The station signed on as WBEN-TV, built by the Butler family alongside the Buffalo Evening News and WBEN radio. It started with NBC and switched to CBS in January 1949, and for its first years it was Buffalo's only television station, carrying secondary ABC and DuMont affiliations. After the newspaper and broadcast properties were separated, the station took its present call sign - "We're Channel IV Buffalo" - on 1 November 1977. Its Elmwood Avenue studios opened in 1960, and an early satellite uplink on the site carried the first signals of the Nickelodeon and The Movie Channel cable networks in the late 1970s.

Lin TV acquired the station in 1995, and through the mergers of the 2010s WIVB arrived at Nexstar Media Group, which since March 2026 also owns NBC affiliate WGRZ after completing its purchase of Tegna. The channel-4 signal carries across western New York into southern Ontario, where Buffalo television has long drawn a sizable Canadian audience.

WIVB Watch Live Streaming now online