WGBA-TV
WLRE, which stood for station co-founder Lyle R. Evans, sought to be operational as early as December 1977. It delayed so that it could put its transmission tower on Scray's Hill near De Pere, the location of other Green Bay market transmitter towers. Ultimately the location was approved, but it meant ground was not broken on the studio and antenna location until June 1980. The station signed on the air on December 31, 1980, broadcasting an analog signal on UHF channel 26. It was the Green Bay market's second independent station, after the short-lived KFIZ-TV (channel 34) in Fond du Lac from 1968 to 1972. It was also the first new commercial station to sign-on in Green Bay itself since WFRV-TV (channel 5) signed on in May 1955. On November 12, 1982, WLRE was able to power up a new transmitter and had plans for further antenna power boosts.
WZBJ
The station first signed on the air on August 18, 1994 as independent station WDRG (the calls standing for its broad service area of Danville, Roanoke and Greensboro, North Carolina). It was founded by MNE Broadcasting, a locally based company owned by businessman Melvin N. Eleazer. Three months after its sign-on, in November 1994, MNE Broadcasting reached an agreement with Time Warner to become the WB affiliate for the Roanoke DMA; the station joined The WB upon the network's launch on January 11, 1995. On January 1, 1997 (as the FCC was switching from using Arbitron's ADI to Nielsen's DMA system to determine which counties remained part of the Roanoke-Lynchburg market, then ranked as the 67th largest in the United States), WDRG changed its call letters to WDRL-TV, standing for Danville-Roanoke-Lynchburg. On that date, the station concurrently became the UPN affiliate for southwestern Virginia; the WB affiliation moved to primary Fox affiliate WFXR (channel 27) and Lynchburg-based satellite WJPR (channel 21), which carried the network's programming on a secondary basis in late night. (WB programming would later move to cable-only "WBVA-TV", a charter affiliate of The WeB [later known as The WB 100+ Station Group], when it launched on Cox Communications' Roanoke system on September 21, 1998.)