History
WNOL-TV signed on in March 1984 as a general entertainment independent television station as well as New Orleans' second, after WGNO, running a variety of cartoons, sitcoms, older movies, drama shows, and religious programs (a lot of which were formerly seen on WGNO). Its slogan was, "Don't Stay Home Without Us," a homage to Karl Malden's American Express commercial campaign.
In 1985, the station was sold to the TVX Broadcast Group. Along with the other stations in the TVX group, WNOL affiliated with Fox in 1986 (it has been said that when WGNO passed on the Fox affiliation, TVX used WNOL's affiliation with Fox as leverage to get Fox on its other stations, TVX actually affiliated all their stations with Fox). In 1987, TVX acquired Taft Broadcasting's independent stations and Fox affiliates. The next year, TVX sold off many of its stations. In 1989 TVX sold WNOL to Qwest Broadcasting, a company owned by minority investors led by musician Quincy Jones. WNOL continued to offer Fox programming, cartoons, sitcoms, movies, and drama shows into the 1990s.
In 1995, Fox entered into a partnership with Savoy Pictures to buy several television stations, one of them being New Orleans's longtime ABC affiliate WVUE (channel 8). As a result, the Fox affiliation, including Fox Kids programming, moved from WNOL to WVUE on January 1, 1996. WNOL, on the other hand, acquired the WB affiliation from WGNO—which in turn picked up ABC from WVUE. As the 1990s progressed, WNOL began to shift away from classic sitcoms and moved toward more talk and reality shows during the day.
Tribune Broadcasting (which then owned a stake in the WB network) began to manage WNOL in 1996 under a local marketing agreement, and purchased the station outright in 2000 (as part of a merger with Qwest), making WNOL and WGNO sister stations. Along with other similarly formatted stations, WNOL began to move away from cartoons, such as The Wacky World of Tex Avery in 2000. When Kids' WB ended its weekday run in 2006, WNOL dropped weekday cartoons.
In 2007, WNOL moved to new studio facilities at the Galleria Center in Metairie, Louisiana which are shared with WGNO.
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