WBNA - History

History

The station signed on April 2, 1986 as an independent station offering mostly local and national religious programming. It gradually mixed in some secular programs as well, mostly old movies. In 1995, it became Louisville's charter affiliate of The WB Network.

However, WBNA felt chagrin at The WB's decision to pick up several programs that offended the fundamentalist and Pentecostal sensibilities of channel 21's viewership, such as nighttime soap Savannah, Charmed, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Unhappily Ever After. WBNA aired syndicated or religious programming instead in these time slots. The WB soon regretted its decision to affiliate with a conservative religious station, and it began looking for a new affiliate in Louisville. In 1997, Campbellsville-based WGRB (channel 34, now WBKI) previously the Fox affiliate for the southern portion of the Louisville market, switched to The WB. At the same time, it announced plans to build a new tower (activated in 2000) that would not only improve its coverage in Louisville, but give it at least grade B coverage in most of Kentucky. At the end of the 1997-98 season, The WB yanked its affiliation from WBNA, leaving channel 34 to become the sole WB affiliate for Louisville. WBNA then became a charter affiliate of the new family-friendly PAX TV network, later i and now Ion, in September 1998.

WBNA is unusual in that the station is only affiliated with Ion Television, rather than being owned by the network. Nearly all Ion stations are owned and operated by ION Media Networks. Also, the station is licensed to Louisville itself rather than an outer ring suburb, as is the usual case with Ion stations. Due to Evangel's commitment to the network, WBNA is free to program additional networks on its bandwidth (as described below) rather than being beholden to the master Ion schedules. For instance, the early afternoon features a repeat of WAVE-TV's Midday newscast at 1pm, and syndicated product from Debmar-Mercury, including The Wendy Williams Show, Tyler Perry's House of Payne and Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns, which in most Ion markets is slotted for paid programming instead.