The first
construction permit for channel 41 in Louisville was issued in 1953 to Robert Rounsaville, owner of
WLOU (1350 AM), Louisville's first Black-oriented radio station. The station, if built, would have been the first Black-oriented TV station in the country. However, the construction of WQXL-TV depended on the success of the first of three planned stations, Atlanta's
WQXI-TV, which failed and left the air in 1955. The permit remained active for several more years; the call letters were changed to WTAM-TV, and in 1963 the permit was sold to Producers, Inc., of
Evansville, Indiana, but no station ever materialized. Producers was related to the Polaris Corporation, which in Louisville owned
WKYW (900 AM).
As an independent station On July 7, 1965, Consolidated Broadcasting Company, a group of five people from
Chillicothe, Missouri, with no television station experience at the time (but who were eventually shareholders in
KCIT-TV in Kansas City), filed for a construction permit for the channel. The permit was granted on April 20, 1966, but it would be nearly five years before any station came to air. Antenna height issues and permitting setbacks caused delays for the new WDRB-TV and for another applicant on channel 21. Approval was finally obtained that summer, and Consolidated renovated a building that had housed a lithograph studio on East Main Street in the
Butchertown neighborhood to serve as WDRB-TV's studios. WDRB-TV finally signed on the air on February 28, 1971, becoming the first independent station in the Louisville market. Initially, the station signed on at 3 p.m. on weekdays; its programming included low-budget afternoon children's programming, occasional news updates provided by anchor Wilson Hatcher, and, most notably, the Saturday night horror film strand
Fright Night, hosted by local theater actor Charlie Kissinger. Not long after going on air, WDRB-TV debuted an afternoon children's program,
Presto the Magic Clown, hosted by Bill "Presto" Dopp. The station was profitable within months and unexpectedly respectable, matching then-ABC affiliate
WLKY (channel 32) in the ratings, even without a local news department. General manager Elmer Jaspan credited the station's immediate success to a strong signal, programming, and the fact that the Louisville market already had a commercial UHF station. Consolidated Broadcasting Corporation sold the station in 1977 to the
Minneapolis Star & Tribune Company (which later became the
Cowles Media Company) for $6.5 million. In 1980, the station moved from Butchertown to its present location on Muhammad Ali Boulevard. However, one upgrade that Cowles sought failed to materialize. Beginning in late 1977, WDRB-TV had campaigned for a shift to channel 21. In 1981, however, an administrative law judge denied the application and preferred the competing bid from the Word Broadcasting Network, only for the FCC review board to overturn the decision. Cowles exited television in the early 1980s; after selling its only other station,
KTVH in
Hutchinson, Kansas, it sold WDRB to
Block Communications of
Toledo, Ohio, for $10 million in 1983. Under Block, WDRB-TV dropped the channel 21 application, clearing the way for
WBNA to launch on the channel. Block began to increase WDRB's profile in the market by acquiring higher-rated and more recent off-network sitcoms and dramas to its schedule, along with a focus on the broadcast rights for the burgeoning athletic programs of the
University of Louisville's
Cardinals, which the station won in 1985 and held for two years.
As a Fox affiliate On October 9, 1986, WDRB-TV became an affiliate of the
Fox network. For a time in the 1990s, it was one of two affiliates serving the overall market: in 1992,
Campbellsville-based WGRB (channel 34, later CW affiliate
WBKI-TV) affiliated with the network. WDRB became the sole Fox station in Louisville when WGRB became affiliated with
The WB in 1997. In 1990, the station also regained rights to Louisville athletics after the university spent three years with
WHAS-TV and upgraded its transmitter, improving signal coverage. In 1994, Block Communications entered into a
local marketing agreement to operate
Salem, Indiana–based WFTE (channel 58, later WMYO, now WBKI), which it programmed with new syndicated shows and programs channel 41 no longer had time to air due to Fox network commitments. Block acquired WFTE outright in 2001, creating the first television station duopoly in the Louisville market; this was allowed by the FCC even though there were fewer than eight unique commercial station owners because WFTE had only been put on the air as a result of the original local marketing agreement. , when the transmitter for what was then WFTE was added to WDRB's site. On April 21, 2007, WDRB became the first television station in Louisville to televise the
Kentucky Derby Festival's all-day "
Thunder Over Louisville"
air and
fireworks show in
high definition—which, at the time, was one of the largest technical undertakings ever attempted by an American television station. This was followed by a second—even more elaborate—"Thunder" telecast in HD in April 2008 as part of a new agreement under which the four major news-producing stations rotated the rights to Thunder. The station began phasing out the "Fox 41" branding in favor of simply branding by the WDRB call letters in May 2011. While this occurred shortly after sister station
KTRV-TV in
Boise, Idaho, unexpectedly lost its Fox affiliation, station management stated that the rebrand was done in order to bring its branding in line with Louisville's other major network stations, which have all long branded with their call letters. Additionally, management wanted to distinguish the station from
Fox News Channel. In May 2013, WDRB began construction of an additional of space at its Muhammad Ali Boulevard studio facility, including an expanded newsroom and sales area; the addition of two conference rooms; offices for finance and editing departments; and the addition of a secondary studio to be used for commercial and station projects. The $1.7 million expanded facility opened on May 5, 2014; as a result of the expansion, sister station WBKI-TV relocated its 10 employees from that station's offices in the
Kaden Tower into the WDRB facility. Bill Lamb, who had been general manager of Block's Louisville stations since 2001, was hired by
Fox Television Stations in 2019 to run that company's
KTTV and
KCOP-TV in
Los Angeles. On August 1, 2025,
Gray Media announced it would purchase Block's television stations, including WDRB and WBKI. The $80 million transaction would put the stations under common operation with NBC affiliate
WAVE (channel 3). ==News operation==