Establishment and construction In 1975, Thomas Barr and James Cleary under the name Pioneer Communications petitioned the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to add another television channel to the Huntsville area for the purpose of building an
independent station. At the time, only four channels were assigned to Huntsville: 19, 25, 31, and 48. The FCC proposed adding channel 54, but two Huntsville stations,
WAAY-TV and
WYUR-TV, opposed the proposal. In 1977, the FCC suggested inserting channel 54 at
Decatur, Alabama, which already had channel 23. However, unlike channel 54, channel 23 could not be used at
Monte Sano—the main television transmission site in the region, resulting in low interest. Channel 54 was ultimately added to Huntsville, but there were no applications on file until C. Michael Norton, an attorney from
Nashville, Tennessee, applied for it in September 1981 after seeing it on a list of unused TV allocations. Norton was soon joined by other applicants, with the FCC selecting Community Service Broadcasting, a company owned by John Pauza of
Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Joel Katz of
Atlanta. Pauza owned Media Central, which specialized in the construction of new independent stations in medium markets. For two years, Media Central missed a series of deadlines. In February 1983, after being selected for the
construction permit, Media Central announced it intended to begin broadcasting that fall. By that fall, the target date had shifted to spring 1984. Issues with locating the station's tower impeded a launch at that time, but in late 1984, channel 54 began to take shape. A tower site was purchased in August, the call letters WZDX were assigned in September, and construction began in November. Even then, the station did not start broadcasting in 1984; the antenna was not hoisted onto the station's new tower on Green Mountain until March 1985. From studios on Mastin Lake Road in northeast Huntsville, WZDX first signed on April 14, 1985, as Northern Alabama's first independent station and the area's first new outlet to launch in 22 years. Programming consisted of syndicated reruns, movies, and short local newsbreaks. The station cost the owners between $5 million and $6 million to put on the air. This was a posture shared by the entire Media Central chain at the network's launch. However, after Godbout left in late 1987, WZDX joined Fox in December of that year, becoming the fifth Media Central outlet to join the network in 1987. The late 1980s were times of uncertainty for Media Central. The company filed for bankruptcy protection in July 1987, and
Act III Broadcasting submitted a bid to buy WZDX and
WDBD in
Jackson, Mississippi, the next year; both were among Media Central's most desirable properties. Act III's bid was rejected, as were proposals from Media Central itself and Maryland investment firm Donatelli & Klein, which did come away with WDBD and
WDSI-TV in Chattanooga.
Grant Broadcasting ownership The bankruptcy court approved the acquisition of the station by a consortium of
Citicorp and
Milton Grant in August 1989; the $6.1 million transaction was approved in January 1990. While WZDX represented Citicorp's first venture into broadcasting, WZDX became the first outlet in Grant's return to station ownership. Grant Communications was the successor to the original Grant Broadcasting System, a three-station chain of independent outlets that filed for bankruptcy protection in 1986 and was ultimately sold to its bondholders. Grant obtained rights to
WB network programming in the Huntsville market in 1999, airing it in late night hours on WZDX; the move was a consequence of
Superstation WGN ceasing carriage of WB programs. The company then announced it would launch full-time WB channels in Huntsville and two other markets where it owned stations—the
Quad Cities of Iowa and Illinois and
Roanoke, Virginia—in December 2000. "WAWB", known as "The Valley's WB", launched as a cable channel in October 2001. When The WB and
UPN merged into
The CW in 2006, the merged network selected UPN affiliate
WHDF (channel 15), and "WAWB" became "WAMY", broadcasting
MyNetworkTV. WZDX began broadcasting a digital signal on June 1, 2002. In 2004, the station moved its broadcasting equipment from Green Mountain to Monte Sano on the replacement tower for WAAY-TV, whose mast collapsed during repair work in September 2003, killing three.
Nexstar and Tegna ownership On November 6, 2013,
Nexstar Broadcasting Group announced that it would purchase the Grant stations, including WZDX, for $87.5 million. The sale was completed on December 1, 2014. Four years later, in July 2018, Nexstar agreed to acquire WHDF from
Lockwood Broadcast Group for $2.25 million; Nexstar concurrently took over WHDF's operations through a
time brokerage agreement. The sale was completed on November 9, creating a
duopoly with WZDX. On December 3, 2018, less than a month after closing on its purchase of WHDF, Nexstar announced it would acquire the assets of
Tribune Media—owner of CBS affiliate WHNT-TV since December 2013—for $6.4 billion in cash and debt. WHNT-TV and WZDX, as two of the four highest-rated stations in the market, could not be owned together, though Nexstar could own either station plus WHDF. Nexstar decided to retain the higher-rated WHNT-TV along with WHDF and sell WZDX to
Tegna Inc. after finalizing the Tribune sale; WZDX was one of 19 stations disposed by Nexstar to Tegna and the
E. W. Scripps Company in separate deals worth $1.32 billion. The sale of Tribune to Nexstar was approved by the FCC on September 16. Nexstar acquired Tegna in a deal announced in August 2025 and completed in March 2026. The deal included approval for Nexstar to own three station licenses in markets such as Huntsville. ==News operation==