WNKY

WNKY (channel 40) is a television station in Bowling Green, Kentucky, United States, affiliated with NBC and CBS. It is owned by Marquee Broadcasting alongside two low-power stations: Ion Television affiliate WNKY-LD (channel 35) and Glasgow-licensed Country Network affiliate WDNZ-LD (channel 11). The three stations share studios on Chestnut Street in downtown Bowling Green; WNKY's transmitter is located on Pilot Knob near Smiths Grove, Kentucky.

The FCC granted a construction permit for channel 40 on October 21, 1983, to CMM Communications of Crossville, Tennessee. In 1984, the construction permit was bought by local businessman John M. Cunningham of Crossville. In 1988, Bob Rodgers, president of Word Broadcasting of Louisville, purchased the construction permit about two years after he successfully launched upstart station WBNA (channel 21) in that city.

The newly licensed station began broadcasting as WQQB on December 17, 1989. At its first sign-on, the outlet operated as a religious independent station airing an analog signal on UHF channel 40. Early on, it struggled in a small market used to all-VHF stations, where ABC affiliate WBKO (channel 13) was all but dominant in Bowling Green proper. The "Big Three" VHF stations based in Nashville were easily received either over-the-air or via cable in the Bowling Green area, and had equal loyalty that WQQB struggled to overcome. In the rush to come to air, it also had a poor overall signal that wasn't easily received, as well as on-air technical problems that occurred on a regular basis. In its first year, many television viewers in the area didn't know of the station's existence as the station had little to no coverage on cable systems outside the immediate Bowling Green area; the revised must-carry rules would not come into effect for another three years.

In 1990, Storer Communications (later TKR Cable, then InterMedia, later Insight Communications, now Charter/Spectrum cable) became the first local cable system to carry the station, assigning it to cable channel 27, temporarily replacing Nashville commercial independent station WXMT (channel 30, now WUXP-TV), which had lost its Fox affiliation to WZTV (channel 17) that February; WXMT would return to area cable systems around 1993, when that station committed to become a UPN affiliate once that network launched in January 1995.

In November 1991, Word Broadcasting Network sold WQQB to Southeastern Communications for $1 million. This came as Word Broadcasting president Bob Rodgers assumed additional duties as a church pastor in the Louisville area, and his decision to concentrate solely on operating WBNA in terms of the company's media efforts. The sale was approved by the FCC the following month. For WQQB's first few months under Southeastern ownership, it switched to a general entertainment format with a mixture of low-budget syndicated programming, like old movies (some of which were sourced from public domain media), sitcoms, and cartoons; this was done in preparation of becoming a network affiliate.

On January 10, 1992, the station changed its call letters to WKNT, for "We're Kentucky News Television." The station's studios were relocated from the Smiths Grove transmission facility and tower to a facility on Campbell Lane shortly after the callsign change. On April 2 of that year, the station became the area's first Fox network affiliate with the then-new on-air branding as Fox 40; the rerun of The Simpsons episode "Saturdays of Thunder", which the series itself would later become a staple in the station's syndicated programming offerings, was the first network program to air on the station that evening. WKNT would then expand their broadcasting hours four days later. Shortly before the beginning of the station's Fox affiliation, Storer Communications reallocated the station to cable channel 7 on its lineup. Prior to the station's Fox affiliation, WXMT (which was WCAY-TV at the time of that station's Fox affiliation) and WZTV served as the region's de facto Fox affiliates; they served as significantly viewed stations for the market. WZTV was kept on most cable systems in the region into the 2000s and 2010s. In January 1993, WKNT installed a new antenna at its transmission tower.

During its time as a Fox station in the 1990s, WKNT broadcast select Southeastern Conference football games via Jefferson Pilot Sports until 2002; the men's basketball games were shared with WBKO until that station became the area's sole outlet for JP Sports (later Lincoln Financial Sports, then Raycom Sports) SEC broadcasts. From September 1994 until January 1997, the station also aired the controversial ABC drama NYPD Blue for its second and third seasons, and the early half of the fourth season, due to WBKO's refusal to air that program; the first season of that program never aired on either station in the Bowling Green market as WKNT declined the initial offer for the program. NYPD Blue moved to WBKO on February 4, 1997, after the new television content ratings system was introduced in January of that year. WKNT also aired programming from the Shop at Home Network every day (except Saturdays) from 1 to 5 a.m. until that network's closure in 2005. The station also aired UPN's Disney's One Too program block from 7 to 9 a.m. weekday mornings and from 5 to 7 a.m. Sunday mornings to cover the children's educational programming requirements. It was the only UPN programming that aired in the Bowling Green market aside from WBKO's broadcasts of the first season of Star Trek: Voyager in 1995; all other UPN programming was only receivable via WUXP-TV (now a MyNetworkTV affiliate) in Nashville, as the de facto UPN affiliate for Bowling Green.

On January 1, 1997, the operation of WKNT was taken over by Crossroads Communications under a local marketing agreement (LMA). Crossroads, a subsidiary of Okemos, Michigan–based Northwest Broadcasting, would buy the station outright on July 17, 2000.