WAFB - History

History

The station began broadcasting on April 19, 1953 as the second television station in the state of Louisiana. It launched as a television counterpart to local radio stations WAFB-AM and WAFB-FM, which both signed on in 1948 and were affiliated with MBS. Louis S. Prejean and associates (Modern Broadcasting of Baton Rouge) were the first owners of the station, and they sold it to Royal Street Corporation of New Orleans in 1956. In 1957, they sold the radio stations, with the AM station changing its format to black music and the FM station going off the air until being relaunched in 1968. The sale of WAFB-TV to Royal Street Corporation made it a sister station to Louisiana's first television station, WDSU-TV. Royal Street owned the station until 1964, when it sold the station to locally-based Guaranty Corporation. In 1965, the station moved its transmission tower from Zachary to south of LSU's campus, allowing viewers in a 90 mile radius to receive its signal; it was also in that year that the station started broadcasting in color.

Originally broadcasting an analog signal on UHF channel 28, WAFB moved to VHF channel 9 in 1960. WDAM-TV in Hattiesburg, Mississippi moved to channel 7 to accommodate this switch. The station has always been a CBS affiliate but carried some NBC programming until WBRZ-TV signed-on in 1955. WAFB also carried some ABC programming until WRBT (now WVLA) signed-on in 1971 and some programming from DuMont until that network folded. The station also aired Time for Beany during its early years on the air from the Paramount Television Network and was briefly affiliated with the NTA Film Network, airing programs Sheriff of Cochise, How to Marry a Millionaire, and This is Alice.

In 1988, Guaranty sold the station to Aflac. Under new ownership, the station underwent many changes. During 1988, Aflac invested $2 million in redesigning the studio, dropped the -TV suffix from its call letters and began branding itself as "Louisiana's News Channel," a slogan the station continues to use today. In addition, the new owners cancelled the station's beloved 33-year old half-hour local weekday program Storyland, then the longest-running children's program, hosted by Buckskin Bill Black and rechristened it as "Buckskin and Friends," an hour-long show that aired on Saturday mornings. It was also in 1988 that the owners petitioned CBS to air the network's daytime programs in a different order—airing syndicated programming at 10 a.m., The Price is Right at 11 a.m., and The Young and the Restless at 4 p.m. as a way to boost ratings as a lead-in to the noon and 5 p.m. newscasts. WAFB began broadcasting 24 hours a day on September 12, 1990.

In 1997, Aflac sold its entire broadcasting division, including WAFB, to current owner Raycom Media. In 2003, Raycom acquired former The Box affiliate WBXH, which became a sister station to WAFB when the channel became Baton Rouge's third UPN affiliate and later MyNetworkTV affiliate in 2006. It originally aired a digital signal on UHF channel 46 from a transmitter at its studios. WAFB shut down analog transmissions on June 12, 2009, and moved its digital broadcasts back to its previous analog channel number, 9. With the new digital channel, WAFB rebroadcasts WBXH on channel 9.4 and, before the launch of Bounce TV affiliate in September 2011, weather on channel 9.2.