WLNY-TV (channel 55), branded New York 55, is an independent television station licensed to Riverhead, New York, United States, serving the New York City television market. It is owned by the CBS News and Stations group alongside CBS flagship WCBS-TV (channel 2). The two stations share studios within the CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th Street in Midtown Manhattan; WLNY-TV's transmitter is located in Ridge, New York. The station's over-the-air broadcast covers most of Long Island, but WLNY-TV is available on cable and satellite systems throughout the New York City market.

Channel 55 went on air on April 28, 1985, as WLIG. For its first 26 years of existence, it was owned by Long Island businessman Michael Pascucci; it primarily offered older movies and syndicated shows, though it also featured a 10 p.m. newscast. It spent seven years fighting with Cablevision of Long Island for a channel on the cable system, a battle which sapped the station of potential viewers and was only resolved with the reinstatement of must-carry regulations. Those rules allowed WLNY to gain access to cable systems throughout the New York area, even while its location at some distance from New York City enabled it to carry popular syndicated shows also sold to the New York stations. In 1993, the station reinstated its local news department, which by 2011 was airing one Long Island–focused newscast each night.

CBS agreed to purchase WLNY in 2011 and took control in 2012, dissolving its existing news division for newscasts from the Broadcast Center which vary between WCBS newscast extensions and shows which air nationwide on fellow CBS-owned independents, but have no Long Island-specific focus. Since 2023, WLNY offers morning and 8 p.m. newscasts from WCBS-TV.

In 2021, the Los Angeles Times revealed that the purchase came with a membership to the exclusive Sebonack Golf Club in Southampton, built by Pascucci, which CBS Television Stations president Peter Dunn treated as his own; another executive joked in a call that the acquisition of WLNY represented the purchase of a golf membership, not a TV station. This was among several allegations against Dunn that led to his termination from the company.

In 1965, the Island Broadcasting System, owner of WRIV in Riverhead and WALK in Patchogue, applied for a construction permit for UHF channel 55. NBC newscaster Chet Huntley was a part-owner, and the company believed the station could obtain affiliation with that network. Huntley withdrew from ownership in the television station, possibly due to NBC company policy, before approval was given in 1967. The station would have primarily served Suffolk County. The station was never built, and in 1968 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) sent WRIV-TV and seven other unbuilt ultra high frequency (UHF) stations orders to build or lose their permit.

Life Broadcasting Network, Inc., applied to the FCC in October 1979 seeking a construction permit to build channel 55. Life Broadcasting Network was owned by local businessman Michael Pascucci, who proposed to program channel 55 with "nondenominational religious and family programming". The FCC granted the permit in 1982. The station, WLIG, would broadcast from a transmitter in Ridge, and be loosely aligned with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre; its programming would be family-friendly, relying on old sitcoms and movies plus a 10 p.m. newscast covering Long Island. The Ridge site was further west than the original location, which was approved by the FCC but rejected by the Navy.

WLIG began broadcasting on April 28, 1985. It hoped to avoid the struggle that befell the previous attempt at Long Island–oriented commercial television, WSNL-TV (channel 67), which left the air after 20 months. The nightly newscast, News 55 Long Island, had three full-time staff and two camera crews; the station also aired a public affairs show, Focus on Long Island.

The defining struggle of WLIG's early years of operation was its battle to get on local cable systems, especially Cablevision of Long Island. In April 1985, when channel 55 took to the air, the system had 240,000 subscribers. At the time the station signed on, must carry rules were in effect requiring cable systems to carry local stations within 35 miles (56 km) to subscribers, but only about 4,000 of the 240,000 subscribers to Cablevision of Long Island were within 35 miles of Riverhead. The must carry rule was struck down by a federal appeals court in July 1985, but Cablevision did not add WLIG at launch, saying it was a distant station that would have required copyright fees and that it lacked channel capacity. By June 1987, WLIG was estimated to reach 200,000 viewers and was carried on eight of nine cable television providers on Long Island; Cablevision, the lone holdout, claimed that WLIG added nothing to the service they already offered and therefore refused to carry it. While it offered at one point to place the WLIG newscast on a public access channel, Pascucci wanted some of the station's entertainment programming—dismissed by a Cablevision spokesman as more duplicative "syndicated reruns and old movies"—to be carried as well and refused the offer. A cable subscriber advocacy group, New Yorkers for Fair Cable, claimed that the real reason was that WLIG competed with services that Cablevision owned and offered, specifically News 12 Long Island. In October 1987, BQ Cable Company began offering WLIG to subscribers in Brooklyn and Queens.