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Third part of Batch 1. Next is NBC's Gotham City affiliate WNKW. Callsign History: WNKW-TV (1949-1970) WNKW (1970-present) Affiliation History: NBC (1949-present) DuMont (secondary; 1949-1956) Ownership History: Weaver family (1949-1962) Filmways (1962-1965) Pearl Broadcasting (1965-1976) General Electric (1976-1983) Knight-Ridder (1983-1989) News-Press & Gazette Company (1989-1993) New Vision Television (1993-1995) Ellis Communications (1995-1998) Raycom Media (1998-2018) Gray Television (2018-present) History: WNKW-TV launched on May 13, 1949 as a dual NBC-DuMont station. Owned by the Weaver family, it was a sister station to NBC radio affiliate WNKW (1020 AM and 107.9 FM). DuMont would cease operations in 1956, resulting in WNKW-TV becoming Gotham City's NBC affiliate. Although it eventually grew to become NBC's strongest affiliates, it would drop preempt some shows from NBC in favor of local and syndicated programming. In 1962, television production company Filmways bought the WNKW cluster. 3 years later in 1965, the WNKW cluster was sold again this time to the locally-owned Pearl Broadcasting. General Electric would acquire WNKW-TV from Pearl Broadcasting in 1976, dropping the TV suffix after being separated from its radio siblings. WNKW would begin to broadcast the entire NBC schedule in 1981. That same year, it adopted a number-in-a-circle motif that was shared by other GE owned stations. GE would begin to sell most of its stations in preparation to buy NBC, with WNKW being sold to Knight-Ridder, dropping the late GE-era logo in favor of two slanted 11s. This was done to avoid direct parallels to WWGC-TV's circle 7 logo. Knight-Ridder would sell WNKW to News-Press & Gazette Company in 1989. NPG would then sell its stations to the newly formed New Vision Television in 1993. Ellis Communications would acquire New Vision Television in 1995. By that time, WNKW adopted a logo modeled after that of WSB-TV (many other Ellis-owned stations used a similar design style). The next year in 1996, Ellis Communications merged with Aflac's broadcasting arm to form Raycom Media, named after Ellis' sports division Raycom Sports. Raycom was the owner of the station for the next 2 decades, where the station's logo began to drift away slightly from its WSB-TV lean. In 2019, Gray Television would purchase Raycom Media, becoming the current owner of the station. While still being an NBC affiliate, the station would drop the NBC peacock from its logo in 2023 as part of Gray's initiative to remove affiliate marks from its stations' branding.
