In Opelika: Early years
At the petition of Wardean, Inc., the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allocated channel 66 to Opelika in 1978.[2] Wardean then filed for and obtained a construction permit for the channel in 1979.[3] However, it opted to wait to start the station because of high interest rates stifling the economy.[4]
WSWS-TV went on the air on May 23, 1982, a week after starting test broadcasts, as an independent station.[5] Two years later, it was sold to the Christian Television Network (CTN) of Largo, Florida, airing Christian ministry programs as well as financial news from the Financial News Network. It was CTN's first television ministry outside of Florida.[6] As a ministry, the station was hindered by its location in Opelika and not the main population center in its coverage area, Columbus, Georgia. When station manager Ron E. Cottle proposed opening a Columbus studio in 1987, neighbors near the planned facility protested its location in a residential area.[7] Its signal was weak on local cable systems, and Phenix City Cable removed the station from its lineup in 1988 to add TNT.[8]
Affiliations with The WB, UPN, and The CW
After a decade, the station started to emerge from Christian programming. It was sold to RCH Broadcasting, also known as Genesis Broadcasting, of Tampa and affiliated with The WB after taking programming from America One to replace its Christian programs.[9] RCH then sold it to Pappas Telecasting.[10] The WB, however, was not a panacea for its poor signal, which continued to trouble local cable companies that refused to carry the station; a plan to move to the tower of WRBL and WTVM in Cusseta, Georgia, fell through.[11] In 1998, WSWS-TV announced it would switch from The WB to UPN.[12]
Loss of CW affiliation
On April 2, 2009, it was announced that The CW would move to a subchannel of NBC affiliate WLTZ beginning April 27. The move came at a perilous moment for Pappas. The company had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in May 2008; while the beginning of the Great Recession was primarily to blame, the company's bankruptcy filing specifically cited The CW's poor ratings.[21]
After operating as an independent, the station's on-air record became spotty while Pappas worked through bankruptcy. On June 4, 2010, Pappas took WLGA off the air citing its bankruptcy and "the scarcity of funds generally" at the venture.[22] It briefly went back on the air beginning May 31, 2011, to retain its license before leaving the air again on June 14, 2011.[23] The station returned to the air in 2012 with WeatherNation and later Antenna TV, but it continued to be in Pappas's liquidating trust. By 2015, just three former Pappas stations had not been sold: the combination of KCWI-TV
CNZ Communications ownership; Atlanta move-in
Pappas finally liquidated WLGA in 2016 by selling it to CNZ Communications for $500,000.[25]
CNZ invested in adding a second transmitter at Warm Springs, Georgia, converting the station into a distributed transmission system (DTS). The primary purpose of this was to extend the station's signal to include the Atlanta area, a move that allowed CNZ to successfully petition Nielsen Media Research to reclassify the station into the Atlanta designated market area in September 2020. At that time, the call sign changed to WGBP-TV.[26] In January 2022, the FCC denied a carriage complaint made by WGBP-TV against satellite TV provider DirecTV, but it signaled that the station would qualify for must-carry status in both Columbus and Atlanta during the next round of retransmission consent elections.
On October 6, 2025, it was announced that the station, which had changed its call sign from WGBP-TV to WHOT-TV on October 1, would on October 30 affiliate with MediaCo Holding's Hot 97 TV—a free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channel produced by New York City urban contemporary radio station WQHT that features programming on hip-hop music and culture.[27]
