WDKY-TV


WDKY-TV, virtual channel 56, is a Fox-affiliated television station serving Lexington, Kentucky, United States that is licensed to nearby Danville. Its transmitter is located southeast of Lexington. Owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group, the station has offices on Euclid Avenue in Lexington's Chevy Chase neighborhood but broadcasts newscasts from the studios of Gray Television-owned CBS affiliate WKYT-TV on Winchester Road.
WDKY-TV is available in the Lexington area on Charter Spectrum channels 7 and 910. Cable subscribers in Frankfort can view WDKY on Frankfort Plant Board channels 5 and 505.

History

WDKY began broadcasting on February 10, 1986 as an independent station. The station was founded by John D. Backe. For a few months, WDKY and then-independent station WLKT competed with each other for the best programming and movies and even airing the Independent Network News. On October 9, 1986, the station became a charter affiliate of Fox. The station began operating from studio facilities located at 434 Interstate Avenue in Lexington. Backe sold WDKY to the MMC Television Corporation in 1989. MMC in turn sold the station to Superior Communications in 1992. In 1996, the station relocated to its current studios on Euclid Avenue in Lexington's Chevy Chase neighborhood. That same year, WDKY and sister station KOCB in Oklahoma City were both acquired by the Sinclair Broadcast Group.
On May 15, 2012, Sinclair and Fox agreed to a five-year extension to the network's affiliation agreement with Sinclair's 19 Fox stations, including WDKY-TV, that will run through 2017.
On January 27, 2020, Sinclair announced that it would sell WDKY and the non-license assets of KGBT-TV in Harlingen, Texas to Nexstar Media Group as part of a settlement between the two companies over Sinclair's failed acquisition of Tribune Media, which was ultimately acquired by Nexstar. While WDKY would be Nexstar's first property licensed within the Commonwealth of Kentucky, the company's founder, Perry Sook, was once a principal of Superior Communications, making the sale of WDKY to Nexstar a homecoming of sorts. WDKY would also become a sister station with several properties that serve various portions of the state, including WKRN-TV in Nashville, Tennessee, WOWK-TV in Charleston, West Virginia, and WEHT and WTVW in Evansville, Indiana. In addition, Media General, a company Nexstar acquired in 2017, owned Lexington ABC affiliate WTVQ-DT from 1997 to 2008.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:
ChannelPSIP Short NameVideoAspectProgramming
56.1FOX720pMain WDKY-TV programming / Fox
56.2Comet480iComet
56.3Charge!480iCharge!
56.4TBD480iTBD

Analog-to-digital conversion

WDKY-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 56, 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. The station's digital signal moved from its pre-transition VHF channel 4 to UHF channel 31. Through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 56, which was among the high band UHF channels that were removed from broadcasting use as a result of the transition.

TV spectrum repack

WDKY moved its channel allocation from digital channel 31 to digital channel 19 at 10:00 a.m. on May 7, 2019 and remains on virtual channel 56.

History of digital subchannels

WDKY-DT2

WDKY-DT2 was launched in 2011 to serve as an affiliate of TheCoolTV, which is a digital multi-cast network that only broadcasts music videos. The subchannel went silent in 2012 due to poor viewership ratings. In 2014, WDKY-DT2 was relaunched to serve as an affiliate of Sony Pictures Television's GetTV movie channel as part of an affiliation deal between GetTV and Sinclair Broadcasting. WDKY-DT2 is also the Lexington market's home for the Conference USA and Ohio Valley Conference sports syndication packages from Sinclair's syndicated sports programming service, the American Sports Network, hence the sub-channel being transmitted in widescreen standard definition.
On January 15, 2016, WDKY announced the launch of Comet on 56.2, dropping GetTV.

WDKY-DT3

In 2015, WDKY-DT3 was launched to serve as an affiliation with another upstart movie network, Grit. WDKY also commented that ASN programming will be shared on 56.3. In early 2017, Grit was dropped and replaced with Sinclair's new network Charge!

WDKY-DT4

In early June 2017, WDKY launched another new network from Sinclair, called TBD, on WDKY-DT4.

Programming

In addition to the Fox network schedule, syndicated programming on WDKY includes Maury and Judge Judy, among others.

Newscasts

In 1995, CBS affiliate WKYT-TV began producing a nightly 10 o'clock newscast. On March 12, 2007, WDKY began airing an hour of news on weekday mornings at 7 a.m., that is also produced by WKYT. Weeknights at 10:45, there is a 15-minute sports replay show called the Fox 56 Sports Extra. All news programs originate from WKYT's studios on Winchester Road in the Brighton section of Lexington. On April 11, 2008, WKYT began broadcasting WDKY's newscasts in high definition becoming the first station in Kentucky to make the transition. The WDKY newscasts were included in the upgrade, making WDKY the first Fox affiliate in Kentucky and the first Sinclair station to air local news in high definition.