The station's
construction permit was granted by the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on February 22, 2011, under the
call sign of W35CY-D. The calls were changed to WECY-LD on December 7, 2015. Originally licensed to
Indianapolis and still a
silent station, the station was under ownership of
DTV America Corporation of
Sunrise, Florida, until it was sold to Woodland Communications, an upstate New York-based broadcaster, in a station trade with DTV America in early 2017 (in the trade, DTV America got
WWHC-LP in
Olean, New York). The new owners then entered into a local marketing agreement with Star City Broadcasting, a partnership between Woodland and Waypoint Media, a company operated by Mike Reed. The station's broadcasts began on July 1, 2017, providing the Lafayette
market with the only missing local broadcast of a "
Big Three" (ABC,
CBS and NBC—or, including Fox, "big four") commercial network; before the station began broadcasting, ABC programming was provided to the Lafayette market on cable and satellite via
WRTV. Though it has always branded as "WPBY", it did not officially take on the WPBY-LD call sign until February 9, 2018, following a swap with
a station in
Elmira, New York. In April 2018, Star City Broadcasting entered into negotiations for the full purchase of WPBY-LD from Woodland. The application was approved by the FCC the following month. In July 2021, Waypoint announced that it would sell nine of its television stations, including WPBY-LD and WPBI-LD, to
Cumming, Georgia—based Coastal Television for $36.9 million. The sale was completed on January 4, 2022. ==Programming==