History
The station began broadcasting on September 10, 1978 and was the market's first UHF channel and Independent. WPTY also served as the secondary outlet in town for the other three stations whenever they passed on shows in favor of local fare. It was owned by Petry Television (hence the call letters) and ran a general entertainment format of cartoons, movies, sitcoms, westerns, and drama shows. By 1983, WPTY picked up competition when the TVX Broadcast Group's WMKW signed-on and sparked a rivalry between the two.
TVX signed a deal to affiliate all of their stations with Fox in 1987 which resulted in WMKW becoming the area's affiliate. Chase Broadcasting bought Channel 24 in 1988. Fox pulled the affiliation from Channel 30 (by then known as WLMT) in February 1990 and gave it to WPTY. This occurred because TVX's deal with Fox included a clause stating that if an under-performing TVX station was sold, it could lose its affiliation.
Clear Channel Communications bought WPTY in 1992. This occurred as a result of Chase Broadcasting's merger with Renaissance Broadcasting that year which left Renaissance over the Federal Communications Commission limit of 12 stations allowed at the time. A year later, a local marketing agreement (LMA) between Clear Channel and WLMT's then owner MT Communications brought the two rival stations together and they pooled resources and programming. In 1994, Fox Television Stations surprised the market by buying longtime ABC affiliate WHBQ-TV and announced that the station would become the new affiliate. In turn, ABC decided to go with WPTY as its new affiliate which happened on December 1, 1995.
At this point, the station began evolving into a traditional network affiliate running mostly first run syndicated shows and a few sitcoms while WLMT ran cartoons, movies, sitcoms, and some reality/talk shows as well. In 2001, Clear Channel would buy WLMT outright from Max Media making the two stations sisters. On April 20, 2007, Clear Channel entered into an agreement to sell its entire television stations group to Newport Television, a broadcaster controlled by Providence Equity Partners. Newport announced on July 19, 2012 that it would sell 12 of its stations, including WPTY and WLMT, to Nexstar Broadcasting Group. The transaction was finalized on December 3.
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