Throwback Thursday: Celebrating 35 years of TV broadcasting

Throwback Thursday strives to celebrate major milestones in our southern Kentucky community. We can’t let the year 2025 slip away without mentioning a major accomplishment of our own, here at WNKY. 2025 marks the 35th year of our television station being on the air. First broadcast in December of 1989, we will be celebrating year 36 in just a few months. In the meantime, let’s take a look back through broadcasts of years past.

It all started in 1983, when the FCC gave a construction permit for channel 40 in October of 1983 to CMM Communications, from Crossville, Tennessee. The station permit traded hands a couple more times before Bob Rodgers, President of Word Broadcasting in Louisville, officially began broadcasting as WQQB in December 1989. It was originally a religious independent station, and struggled with technical issues to be seen by viewers in the Bowling Green area, who had access to WBKO and three stations based out of Nashville instead. In November 1991, the station sold to Southeastern Communications, switching to a general entertainment format with low-budget syndicated programming and old movies, sitcoms, and cartoons.

WQQB changed its call letters to WKNT in January 1992 – called “We’re Kentucky News Television.” The studio relocated from a Smiths Grove tower and transmitter to a Campbell Lane facility. In March 2001, Fox dropped its affiliation and NBC agreed to become its new affiliate. On March 27, 2001, the station officially changed its call letters to WNKY, also boosting its power from 776 thousand watts to 1.64 million watts. Max Media bought the station in November 2002, and then sold to our current owners, Marquee Broadcasting, in 2017.

In 2005, the station adopted Radar, a purebred border collie, as the mascot and official “weather dog” for locally produced weather hits. Radar would interact with the meteorologists and on air personalities both on camera and in person at community events until his death in 2017. His sister “SoKY” is the station’s mascot now.

Bowling Green Today launched in 2009, a weekday morning show – which rebranded to SOKY Sunrise in 2015 and is now News 40 Sunrise. SOKY at Noon made its debut in April 2017. Evening newscasts started recording in 2018, and a night time newscast debuted in July 2021. Most recently, a 9am weekday show launched this year. The station produces over 19 hours of news content per week and its locally sourced stories are the heart of its storytelling. With a mission to make local matter and rely on community-driven stories, WNKY continues to grow its newscasts and reach.

Thank you, southern Kentucky, for 35 amazing years. We look forward to the next 35 and beyond.