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.
WAGA-TV
By September 1994, with only a little more than two months left before WAGA-TV was slated to join Fox, CBS faced the prospect of having to pipe in WRBL in Columbus, WMAZ-TV in Macon, WSPA-TV in Spartanburg, South Carolina and WDEF-TV in Chattanooga, Tennessee for Atlanta-area cable customers until it found a new affiliate in the market. Almost out of desperation, on September 26, CBS made a deal to buy independent station WVEU (channel 69, now CW owned-and-operated station WUPA) for $46 million. However, this was only a contingency, since CBS preferred to move its programming to a higher-profile station. It continued to negotiate with Tribune Broadcasting to reach a deal to affiliate with longtime independent station WGNX (channel 46, now WGCL-TV), which initially turned down CBS' offer to affiliate with the station; WGNX was especially attractive for the network since channel 46 was the only non-Big Three station in the Atlanta market that had a functioning news department. That November, Tribune relented and signed a deal with CBS to convert WGNX into the network's new Atlanta affiliate. As a consequence of the WGNX deal, CBS reached an agreement to sell WVEU to Viacom from Broadcasting Corp. of Georgia for $27 million, in a deal that saw it sell CBS affiliate KSLA in Shreveport, Louisiana to Ellis Communications (owned by Atlanta-based businessman Bert Ellis) to comply with FCC ownership rules in coincidence with Viacom's divestitures of its major network-affiliated television stations to focus on its UPN charter outlets. The last CBS network program to air on WAGA was a first-run episode of "Walker, Texas Ranger" at 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time on December 10; this led into a message by then-station president and general manager Jack Sander shortly before the start of that evening's edition of "Channel 5 Eyewitness News at 11:00" (which was relaunched as an hour-long prime time newscast at 10:00 p.m. two days later), informing viewers about the pending network changes.