WLNS-TV history

DuMont programming disappeared when the network ceased operations in 1956.

ABC disappeared from the schedule in 1958 when WJRT-TV signed on from Flint.

NBC disappeared from the schedule in 1959 when WILX-TV signed on.

On September 2, 1973, the Sunday Detroit Free Press published the first piece of an investigation by David Cay Johnston into news blackouts and manipulations ordered by Gross with follow-up reports continuing for three years.

WJIM kept its license when the initial revocation was reversed by the FCC in 1982.

The station, per FCC rules at the time (which prohibited TV and radio stations in the same market, but with different ownership, from sharing the same call letters) adopted its current call letters, WLNS-TV, on July 16, 1984.

Backe's ownership of the station was short-lived; in 1986 it sold WLNS to Young Broadcasting.

In May 1994, Detroit CBS affiliate WJBK announced that it would switch its affiliation to Fox as part of a deal between the network and New World Communications.

WLNS-TV served as the default CBS affiliate for the western portion of the Detroit market until WWJ-TV built a new transmitter in 1999.

WLNS-TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 6, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate.

On January 30, 2012, WLNS-TV changed its 6.2 affiliation to the Live Well Network along with 7 other Young stations.

WLNS-TV was not part of the management agreement because Gray already owned WILX. Young merged with Media General in November 2013.

Media General added GetTV to 20 of its stations' subchannels, including WLNS-TV, in a roll out that started on February 1, 2016.