The AM station was sold off to a religious broadcaster in 2012 when the Western New York Public Broadcasting Association bought Buffalo's other full NPR member, WBFO, and moved most of WNED radio's programming there. On May 23, 1987, WNED-TV signed on a sister station, WNEQ-TV, on UHF channel 23. However, WNEQ failed to gain approval to from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to be carried on basic cable in southern Ontario, denying it access to potential viewers and donors, and both stations struggled financially. It soon became apparent that Buffalo was not big enough to support two public television stations. As a result, the Western New York Public Broadcasting Association put WNEQ-TV up for sale; it then announced the sale of WNEQ-TV to LIN Broadcasting (owner of WIVB-TV) in late 1999. Until this time, WNED-TV had maintained the old commercial license it had inherited from WBUF-TV, while WNEQ-TV had operated on a traditional non-commercial license. LIN needed WNED-TV's commercial license in order to make its acquisition viable. At one point, it seemed likely that LIN would actually purchase channel 17 from the Western New York Public Broadcasting Association. This would have resulted in the WNED-TV intellectual unit moving to channel 23 (which would have made WNEQ-TV the area's primary PBS station), while channel 17 would have become a commercial station. However, the long history of channel 17 as a PBS member station made this an undesirable option for the public broadcaster due to concerns that having WNEQ-TV become the market's sole PBS outlet would cause viewer confusion and potentially reduce the amount of donations that the station would receive. As well, WNED-TV was carried on the basic cable tier of cable systems in the Golden Horseshoe and particularly Toronto, a major source of donations during the channel's fundraising drives, while WNEQ-TV had been repeatedly denied permission by the CRTC to be carried on basic cable in Toronto, meaning the public broadcaster risked losing access to a major source of its revenue if it abandoned channel 17. The FCC was persuaded to allow channel 17 and channel 23 to swap licenses, allowing WNEQ-TV to be sold to LIN. After 42 years of being a commercial licensee operating as a non-commercial broadcaster, WNED-TV received an educational license in 2000. WNEQ-TV was sold to LIN in early 2001; that station is now WNLO and operates as the market's CW affiliate.