Under original ownership by Frank Digital Broadcasting, the station’s first construction permit was issued by the Federal Communications Commission on February 22, 2011 under the callsign W11DJ-D. The station has been silent, but the station could be the market’s third low-powered television station after WCZU-LD and W14DG-D, the latter of which was only on the air for a month in 2016. The station would also be the first television station of any kind to be licensed in Glasgow since 2010, when former Trinity Broadcasting Networkowned-and-operated translators WKUT-LP and WKUW-LP went off the air due to lack of viewer support; both of them relocated to the Louisville and Nashville markets, respectively, the latter of which became the Nashville area’s Buzzr affiliate from December 2015 to September 2019, then became a repeater of Lebanon, Tennessee-licensed WJFB. 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 are now owned by WJFB’s current owner HC2 Holdings.
New ownership
In 2018, the FCC issued a Special temporary authority 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 Bowling Green. The Daily News also owns two radio stations: news/talk AM stationWKCT, along with its associated translator W281BV, and classic rock-formatted FM sister station WDNS. The special temporary authority license would allow it to conduct test broadcasts from a former AT&T long-linesmicrowave tower near Brownsville, with the directional antenna orienting the signal to the south to not only cover the city of Bowling Green proper, but also to protect the full-power signal of Louisville’s ABC affiliate WHAS-TV, which also broadcasts on channel 11, from co-channel interference. However, the station also has a construction permit to instead transmit from the WDNS radio transmission tower located in southeastern Warren County just off Kentucky Route 1402 west of Threeforks. If it begins broadcasting at that location, the projected signal coverage would cover almost all of the Bowling Green media market area, plus central and southern portions of Grayson County, and nearby portions of northern Allen County located within a few miles from that county’s northern boundary. The signal would be oriented west to east, but also have limited coverage to the north to also protect the signals of WHAS-TV in Louisville and WETV-LP in Murfreesboro, Tennessee; they both broadcast their digital signals on channel 11.
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. 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 has applied for special temporary authority to temporarily transmit the signal on UHF 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. This could happen after religiousindependent station WPBM-CD in nearby Scottsville, Kentucky, which originally transmit on channel 31, moves their digital allocation to channel 15 on October 18, 2019.
