WANF

WANF (channel 46) is an independent television station in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It is the flagship property of locally based Gray Media and is co-owned with CW affiliate WPCH-TV (channel 17) and low-power, Class A Telemundo affiliate WKTB-CD (channel 47). WANF and WPCH-TV share studios on 14th Street Northwest in Atlanta's Home Park neighborhood, while WANF's transmitter is located in the city's Woodland Hills section.

The station was built in 1971 as WHAE-TV (later WANX-TV), owned by the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). Originally a nonprofit operation airing religious programs, the station gradually became a more commercially oriented independent station and broadened its programming to include older movies and family-friendly classic TV shows. CBN sold the station to Tribune Broadcasting in 1983, and the call sign was changed to WGNX in 1984. Tribune substantially built up the station, upgrading programming and turning it into Atlanta's top-rated independent local station; it also started a local newscast for the station in January 1989.

After a major switch of television affiliations in Atlanta in 1994, WGNX became Atlanta's new CBS affiliate and the only such station owned by Tribune. However, news was not seriously expanded until after Meredith Corporation acquired the station in 1999 as part of a purchase-and-trade with Tribune. The WGCL-TV call sign was adopted in 2000 as part of a major, but short-lived, rebrand of the station to "Clear TV" and its newscasts to Clear News. Meredith also assumed operating control of WPCH-TV in 2011, purchasing the station outright in 2017. Over the course of its tenure with CBS, the station was generally a revolving door of management and presenting talent with little ratings success, frequently drawing the lowest ratings of Atlanta's news-producing stations.

The acquisition of the Meredith Local Media division by Gray Media in 2021 has resulted in an increased infusion of resources into the station's newsroom as well as other investments by Gray in Atlanta-area media. As part of a wide-scale rebrand of its news service to Atlanta News First, WGCL-TV changed its call sign to WANF on October 3, 2022. The station disaffiliated from CBS on August 16, 2025, when CBS programming moved to the owned-and-operated WUPA (channel 69).

On January 23, 1968, the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), owned by evangelist Pat Robertson, filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for authority to build a new television station on channel 46 in Atlanta. The application was granted on May 5, 1968, but after several changes in the proposed studio location, the station began broadcasting on June 6, 1971, as WHAE-TV from leased studio facilities in the Protestant Radio and TV Center on Clifton Road. Originally, it operated for six hours a day on weekdays and twelve on Sundays. It was largely an unprofitable operation with, as John Carman writing for The Atlanta Constitution put it, "no particular interest in profits". On September 3, 1977, WHAE-TV changed its call sign to WANX-TV, with a station spokesman stating it wanted "a new identity" and a "fresh start".

Over the course of the 1970s and early 1980s, WHAE-TV/WANX-TV, like other CBN independent stations, eventually adopted a program schedule consisting of older, "family-friendly" classic shows as well as some religious programming, such as CBN's The 700 Club. Movies, a common staple of independents, had been completely absent from the station's lineup until 1974, when the outlet moved into studios on Briarcliff Road that had been vacated by WATL (channel 36), which had been temporarily shuttered in 1971, and thereafter owned by Production 70s, a video production house that declared bankruptcy. This facility had been built around a 1916 red clapboard house. It also began to operate on a more commercial basis in 1980, following a restructuring of the CBN media operation into the commercially authorized Continental Broadcasting Network, turning its first-ever profit in 1982. By 1983, it had tied WTBS (channel 17), Ted Turner's independent-turned-superstation, in the local ratings, and The 700 Club was the only religious program on its weekday lineup.

In July 1983, Tribune Broadcasting of Chicago announced it would spend $32 million to purchase WANX-TV from CBN. It was the company's fifth station, purchased as CBN was seeking to raise money for other operations and retire some of its debts. On March 15, 1984, the call sign was changed to WGNX, stated to be a mixture of the call signs of Tribune stations WGN-TV in Chicago and WPIX in New York City.

WGNX emerged as the number-one local independent in Atlanta under Tribune's ownership. A reported $40 million in program expenditures lifted costs market-wide for syndicated shows and gave channel 46 a stronger lineup. With $19 million in revenue for 1985, WGNX more than doubled the billing of its primary competitor, WATL. WATL, which engineered its own rise to viability in the late 1980s, and WGNX gave Atlanta its first serious local independent stations. Atlanta Hawks basketball moved from WVEU (channel 69) to WGNX in the 1986–87 season.