Outlet profile

WTTG Fox 5 DC

U.S. center-right corporate (local news, with a Fox-owned parent)

Owned byOwned and operated by Fox Television Stations, a subsidiary of Fox Corporation. The Murdoch family controls Fox Corporation. WTTG forms a duopoly with MyNetworkTV station WDCA (channel 20).

FundingMainly local and national advertising. It also earns retransmission-consent fees from cable and satellite carriers, and Fox network affiliation arrangements are internal to the parent company.

On the administrationmostly neutral

Background

WTTG began broadcasting on May 19, 1945, as Washington's first television station and the second station of the DuMont Television Network. After DuMont, it was owned by Metromedia. In 1986 Rupert Murdoch bought the Metromedia stations after acquiring 20th Century Fox, and WTTG became one of the six original Fox owned-and-operated stations when the Fox network launched. It has long drawn strong local ratings, which was unusual for a Fox station in that era. In 2001 Fox bought WDCA from Viacom's Paramount Stations Group, creating a duopoly. The two stations share studios and transmitter facilities on Wisconsin Avenue in Northwest Washington. Fox Television Stations is separate from Fox News Channel, but the two share a parent company. Since February 2026, Fox News Media has supplied a daily 'FOX News Report' brief with anchor Bill Melugin to Fox-owned stations. WTTG's own output centers on local news, weather, traffic and crime, plus coverage of federal events that affect the D.C. area, such as court proceedings on deploying the National Guard in the city. Its local coverage is generally seen as conventional broadcast news, not as sharply ideological as Fox's cable opinion programming.

Sources

Profile compiled 2026-10-15; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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