Fox affiliate
On July 29, 1994, Burnham Broadcasting sold WLUK-TV to SF Broadcasting – a joint venture of Savoy Communications and the Fox Broadcasting Company, then a division of News Corporation – for $38 million;[11] the company later sold three of its other four stations (KHON-TV in Honolulu, WVUE in New Orleans and WALA-TV in Mobile, Alabama) for $229 million on August 25 (a fifth Burnham station, KBAK-TV in Bakersfield, California, was excluded from the deal and was instead spun off to Westwind Communications, a new company that was formed by several former Burnham executives).[12] As a result of the deal, SF Broadcasting announced that the four stations would become Fox affiliates; both Savoy and Fox shared ownership with Fox originally choosing to hold voting stock, ultimately opting not to retain it prior to the closure of the sale of the stations. The purchase was challenged by NBC, which filed a petition with the FCC on September 23, 1994, alleging that News Corporation had improperly set up a shell corporation to circumvent FCC limits on the amount of monetary capital that a foreign company is allowed to invest in an American television station in order to gain control of WLUK.[13] NBC later withdrew its petition against the acquisition on February 17, 1995.[14] The FCC approved the WLUK purchase on April 27, 1995.[15]
WLUK became a Fox affiliate on August 28, 1995, swapping affiliations with WGBA-TV (channel 26), which had acquired the Fox affiliation three years earlier after WXGZ-TV (channel 32, now WACY-TV) shut down due to financial issues. Like most former "Big Three" network affiliates that switched to Fox during that time, WLUK picked up almost no syndicated programming from WGBA, though it was unnecessary because of WGBA's local marketing agreement with WACY-TV; WGBA's programming largely moved to that station instead. The final NBC program to air on WLUK was a repeat of the NBC Sunday Night at the Movies feature Wayne's World at 8 p.m. on August 27, 1995.
Because of Fox's 1994 acquisition of television rights to the NFL's National Football Conference,[16] the switch made WLUK the unofficial "home" station of the Green Bay Packers after years on WBAY (and two years on WFRV), which became a major ratings draw (during the 1994 season, WGBA was the station of record for the Packers). Unlike the New World Communications stations that converted to Fox affiliates, WLUK carried Fox Kids programming, running it one hour earlier on weekday afternoons from 1 to 4 p.m. The station ran Fox Kids until the weekday block ended in December 2001[17] (when it had been pushed back to as early as 10 a.m.), and its successor Saturday morning children's blocks known as Fox Box and later 4KidsTV until the latter block ended nationally in December 2008, when 4Kids Entertainment and Fox parted ways due to a contract dispute. By the time 4Kids TV ended its run, Fox permanently discontinued providing network-supplied children's programming, replacing it with the infomercial block Weekend Marketplace. Fox would return to children's programming in 2014 as Xploration Station replaced Weekend Marketplace.
Since channel 11 joined Fox, Packer football games have routinely drawn an 80% share of the viewing audience – far and away the highest-rated programs in the market, and through Fox's NFL rights deal, the station has broadcast two of the three Super Bowl games the Packers have appeared in, both victories, since 1994; Super Bowls XXXI and XLV, both by far the highest-rated programs in the Green Bay market's history.
On November 28, 1995, Silver King Communications (operated by former Fox executive Barry Diller) announced that it would acquire Savoy Pictures;[18] at the time of the purchase, Silver King's existing stations had mainly been affiliates of the Home Shopping Network (both Silver King and HSN were later acquired by USA Networks). The sale of WVUE and the other SF stations was approved and finalized in March 1996, with its other assets being merged into the company that November. On April 1, 1997, Silver King subsequently sold the station, along with sisters WVUE, KHON and WALA to Indianapolis-based Emmis Communications for $307 million in cash and stock, as part of a sale of Silver King/USA's major network affiliates in order to concentrate on its formerly HSN-affiliated independent stations.[19]
On May 15, 2005, Emmis Communications announced that it would sell its 16 television stations, including WLUK-TV, in order to concentrate on its radio station properties.[20] On August 22, LIN TV Corporation purchased WLUK in a $260 million deal that included WALA-TV and sister station WBPG in Mobile; WTHI-TV in Terre Haute, Indiana, and KRQE-TV in Albuquerque, New Mexico; the sale closed on December 1, 2005.[21][22]
On June 4, 2010, LIN TV entered into shared services and local sales agreements to operate CW affiliate WIWB (channel 14, now WCWF) as part of a deal involving LIN and ACME Communications-owned stations in markets where both companies owned stations.
