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.
WBKI-TV (1983–2017)
The station first signed on the air on July 27, 1983 as WGRB, for Green River Broadcasting. It originally operated as an independent station, serving mainly rural areas on the far southern fringe of the Louisville market. In 1990, the station became the Fox affiliate for this section of the market. Although Louisville's Fox affiliate, WDRB (channel 41), broadcast at the maximum five million watts of power, the station's signal was marginal at best in the southern part of the market. Additionally, cable television did not have much penetration in this portion of the market, leaving much of the area without any access to Fox programming until WGRB joined Fox. WGRB thus became one of the few known cases in which a separately owned station carried a network that already had an affiliate in the same market (similar to situations such as ABC affiliates WCVB-TV and WMUR-TV in the Boston market or NBC affiliate WHIZ-TV in Zanesville, Ohio, about east of Columbus which has WCMH-TV for their NBC affiliate).
WGRB dropped Fox in 1997 and joined The WB, bringing that fledgling network's programming to the southern portion of the market. However, the main WB affiliate for Louisville, WBNA (channel 21, now an independent station), was a conservative religious station, and its owner, Evangel World Prayer Center, frequently pre-empted most of the network's more risqué programs. Frustrated with the pre-emptions, The WB made WGRB the network's exclusive Louisville outlet in 1998. At the same time, WGRB announced plans to build a new transmitter tower that would be located closer to Louisville, and upgrade its analog signal to a full five million watts of power. The station activated this new, more powerful tower in 1999. Along with an upgraded transmitter, the station changed its call letters to WWWB on November 29, 1999, likely done in tribute to the "dubba-dubba-WB!" jingle that the network utilized at the time in its image campaign. On September 19, 2000, the station changed its calls again to WBKI-TV. For most of the remainder of The WB's run, WBKI was one of the network's strongest affiliates.