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.
WJLA-TV
In 1975, Houston businessman Joe Allbritton, the owner of Washington-based Riggs Bank, purchased a controlling interest in the "Star"s media properties, which by that time also included WLVA radio and WLVA-TV (now WSET-TV) in Lynchburg, Virginia; and WCIV in Charleston, South Carolina. As a condition of the purchase, Allbritton was given three years to break up the Washington newspaper/broadcast combination, which the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was seeking to prohibit under the tightening of its concentration of media ownership policy. WMAL-TV was separated first from its radio sisters when ABC purchased WMAL-AM-FM in March 1977. Upon the radio transfer, channel 7, per FCC regulations at the time that forbade TV and radio stations in the same market, but with different ownership groups from sharing the same call letters, changed theirs to the current WJLA-TV, after the owner's initials. In April 1977, Allbritton negotiated a deal to trade the station to Combined Communications Corporation in return for KOCO-TV in Oklahoma City, but called off the deal due to last-minute complications despite receiving FCC approval. Allbritton instead sold the "Washington Star" to Time Inc. in January 1978, and retained WJLA-TV and the Lynchburg and Charleston television stations for what would eventually become Allbritton Communications. Beginning in September of 1984, WJLA became the flagship station in the Greater Washington, DC area for Atlantic Coast Conference Football and Men's Basketball along a syndicated network that was operated by Jefferson-Pilot Communications and eventually jointly produced with Raycom Sports which would last through the 1994 season.