WDNZ-LD (channel 11) is a low-power television station licensed to

Glasgow, Kentucky Glasgow is a home rule-class city in Barren County, Kentucky, United States. It is the seat of its county. Glasgow is the principal city of the Glasgow micropolitan area, which comprises Barren and Metcalfe counties. The population was 15,01 ...

, United States, serving the

Bowling Green A bowling green is a finely laid, close-mown and rolled stretch of turf for playing the game of bowls. Before 1830, when Edwin Beard Budding of Thrupp, near Stroud, UK, invented the lawnmower, lawns were often kept cropped by grazing sheep ...

area as an affiliate of The Country Network. It is owned by Marquee Broadcasting alongside dual

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It is one of NBCUniversal's ...

/ CBS affiliate WNKY (channel 40) and

Ion Television Ion Television (referred to on-air as simply Ion) is an American broadcast television network and FAST television channel owned by the Scripps Networks subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company. The network first began broadcasting on August ...

affiliate WNKY-LD (channel 35). The three stations share studios on Chestnut Street in downtown Bowling Green; WDNZ-LD's transmitter is located near Polkville, Kentucky.

History

Under Frank Digital ownership

While under original ownership by Frank Digital Broadcasting, the station's first construction permit was issued by the

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, internet, wi-fi, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains j ...

on February 22, 2011, under the callsign W11DJ-D. The station has been silent, but the station would eventually become the market's third low-power television station after WCZU-LD (channel 39) and W14DG-D (channel 14), the latter of which was initially only on the air for a month in 2016. The station is also the first television station of any kind to be licensed in Glasgow since 2010, when former

Trinity Broadcasting Network The Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN; legally Trinity Broadcasting of Texas, Inc.) is an international Christian-based broadcast television network and the world's largest religious television network. TBN solicits donations on its Web site, a ...

(TBN) owned-and-operated translators WKUT-LP and WKUW-LP went off the air due to lack of viewer support; both of them relocated to serve the

Louisville Louisville is the most populous city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, sixth-most populous city in the Southeast, and the 27th-most-populous city in the United States. By land area, it is the country's 24th-largest city; however, by populatio ...

and

Nashville Nashville, often known as Music City, is the capital and List of municipalities in Tennessee, most populous city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the county seat, seat of Davidson County, Tennessee, Davidson County in Middle Tennessee, locat ...

markets, respectively. The licenses of both WKUT and WKUW were first sold to Budd Broadcasting in 2010, and then to DTV America Corporation in the mid-2010s, and as of 2017, they, along with WCZU, are now owned by Innovate Corp.

Ownership by The Daily News

In 2018, the FCC issued a

Special temporary authority Special Temporary Authority (STA) in U.S. broadcast law is a type of broadcast license which temporarily allows a broadcast station to operate outside of its normal technical or legal parameters. In the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) st ...

license to the then-W11DJ-D's new licensee, News Publishing, LLC, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Daily News Broadcasting Company of

. The ''Daily News'' also owns two

radio station Radio broadcasting is the broadcasting of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based rad ...

s: news/talk AM station

WKCT WKCT (930 AM) is a News Talk Information– formatted radio station licensed to Bowling Green, Kentucky, United States. The station is owned by the Daily News Broadcasting Company as part of a duopoly with classic rock station WDNS (93.3 FM) ...

(930

kHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), often described as being equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose formal expression in terms of SI base uni ...

), along with its associated translator W281BV (104.1

MHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), often described as being equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose formal expression in terms of SI base u ...

), and

classic rock Classic rock is a radio format that developed from the album-oriented rock (AOR) format in the early 1980s. In the United States, it comprises rock music ranging generally from the mid-1960s through the early-1990s, primarily focusing on comm ...

-formatted FM sister station

WDNS WDNS (93.3 FM) is a classic rock- formatted radio station licensed to, located in, and serving Bowling Green, Kentucky. The station is owned by the Daily News Broadcasting Company as part of a duopoly with News Talk Information station WKCT (93 ...

(93.3 MHz). The special temporary authority license would allow it to conduct test broadcasts from a former

AT&T AT&T Inc., an abbreviation for its predecessor's former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the w ...

long-lines microwave tower near Brownsville, with the directional antenna orienting the signal to the south in order to cover the city of Bowling Green proper, and to protect the full-power signal of Louisville's ABC affiliate

WHAS-TV WHAS-TV (channel 11) is a television station in Louisville, Kentucky, United States, affiliated with ABC. Owned by Tegna Inc., the station maintains studios on West Chestnut Street in Downtown Louisville, and its transmitter is located in rur ...

, which also broadcasts on channel 11, from co-channel interference. However, the station also held a construction permit to instead transmit from the

radio transmission tower located in southeastern Warren County on Iron Bridge Road just off Kentucky Route 1402 (KY 1402) west of Threeforks.

Sign on and MyNetworkTV affiliation takeover

The station adapted its current WDNZ-LD callsign on October 8, 2019. In June 2019, the Antenna TV network's website listed the station as Bowling Green's upcoming Antenna TV affiliate after WCZU-LD dropped both of its Antenna TV and MyNetworkTV affiliations in favor of the newly resurrected

Court TV Court TV is an American digital broadcast network and former pay-television channel. It was originally launched in 1991 with a focus on crime-themed programs such as true crime documentary series, legal analysis talk shows, and live news cover ...

. It was announced that WDNZ will take over both of WCZU's former main-channel affiliations; MyNetworkTV on its main channel, with its DT2 subchannel carrying the full Antenna TV schedule, and Biz TV on a third subchannel. Along with that information, the station applied for special temporary authority to temporarily transmit the signal on

UHF Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter ...

channel 31 from a small tower behind the WDNS/WKCT/W281BV studios on College Street in downtown Bowling Green while the permanent transmission facility near Threeforks is being built. Upon the station's sign-on, WDNZ initially broadcast four digital subchannels, carrying a mixture of

MyNetworkTV MyNetworkTV (stylized as mynetworkTV; unofficially abbreviated MNT or MNTV) is an American commercial broadcast television syndication service and former television network owned by Fox Corporation, operated by its Fox Television Stations ...

, Biz TV and

Antenna TV Antenna TV is an American digital television network owned by Nexstar Media Group. The network's programming consists of classic television series, primarily sitcoms, from the 1950s to the 1990s. Antenna TV's programming and advertising operatio ...

programming on the main channel, with

Stadium A stadium (: stadiums or stadia) is a place or venue for (mostly) outdoor sports, concerts, or other events and consists of a field or stage completely or partially surrounded by a tiered structure designed to allow spectators to stand or sit ...

on DT2, and the full-time schedules of Biz TV and Antenna TV on DT3 and DT4, respectively. In 2020, Biz TV was replaced with The Country Network on the DT3 subchannel. Two other subchannels were launched to provide a visual simulcast of WKCT on a fifth subchannel, displayed as virtual channel 9.30, and

Estrella TV Estrella TV () is an American Spanish-language broadcast television network owned by the Estrella Media subsidiary of HPS Investment Partners, LLC. The network primarily features programs, the vast majority of which are produced by the networ ...

on a DT6 subchannel, originally displayed as 12.1, thus making WDNZ the first Bowling Green-based station to offer a

Spanish-language Spanish () or Castilian () is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken on the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. Today, it is a world language, gl ...

network; it was the only Spanish outlet until

WBGS-LD WBGS-LD (channel 34) is a low-power television station in Bowling Green, Kentucky, United States, affiliated with the Spanish-language network Telemundo. Owned by Gray Media alongside ABC/ Fox/ CW+ affiliate WBKO (channel 13), it also function ...

(channel 34) became a

Telemundo Telemundo (; formerly NetSpan) is an American Spanish-language terrestrial television network owned by NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, a division of NBCUniversal, which in turn is a wholly owned subsidiary of Comcast. It provides content ...

affiliate in 2023. As of July 5, 2022, the station holds an application to reallocate its signal to VHF channel 8.

Sale to Marquee Broadcasting

On February 24, 2023, Daily News Broadcasting sold the station to Marquee Broadcasting, owner of full-power station WNKY and its low-power counterpart. The sale has been approved by the FCC on April 7, 2023. In 2024, WDNZ dropped its affiliations with Antenna TV, Biz TV and MyNetworkTV after the sale to Marquee was finalized. The Country Network is now on the station's primary subchannel.

Programming

While under operation by the ''Daily News'', WDNZ-LD aired local news programs on weekday mornings and evenings, in addition to the primary programming of its subchannels.

Subchannels

The station's signal is

multiplexed In telecommunications and computer networking, multiplexing (sometimes contracted to muxing) is a method by which multiple analog or digital signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium. The aim is to share a scarce resource— ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wdnz-ld The Country Network affiliates Estrella TV affiliates Glasgow, Kentucky DNZ-LD Marquee Broadcasting Mass media in Bowling Green, Kentucky The Nest (TV network) affiliates Television channels and stations established in 2019 DNZ-LD