News operation
WAVE presently broadcasts 53 1/2 hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with nine hours each weekday, four hours on Saturdays and 4 1/2 hours on Sundays); in addition, the station produces two live call-in discussion programs each weekday, Listens Live at 12:30 p.m. (following WAVE News at Noon) and WAVE Country with Dawne Gee at 2 p.m. (before InvestigateTV+ at 2:30 p.m.).
In the early days, both WAVE television and radio news was done live with Livingston Gilbert; he anchored for 39 years until his 1980 retirement.
Channel 3 was the ratings leader in the Louisville market for over 20 years, before WHAS-TV overtook it at #1 in the 1970s. The station has spent most of the last four decades as runner-up to WHAS-TV, though in recent years it has had to fend off a spirited challenge from WLKY. Louisville is also one of the few markets in the country where all four of the major network-affiliated stations have roughly equal ratings in recent years, although WLKY pulled ahead of WAVE, WHAS-TV and Fox affiliate WDRB (channel 41) during the May 2011 Nielsen ratings period.
On July 9, 1990, WAVE debuted the first 5 p.m. newscast in the Louisville market; titled FirstNews, it was anchored by veteran broadcaster Jackie Hays, who went on to become the longest-serving female anchor in the station's history (before WAVE, Hays anchored at then-NBC affiliate KYW-TV in Philadelphia; that station is currently a CBS O&O). Hays and co-anchor Don Schroeder were voted "Best TV News Anchor Team" and the station itself was chosen as "Best Source for Local News" by readers of Louisville Magazine. Jackie Hays retired from WAVE in 2009 and was inducted into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame in 2011. Former chief meteorologist Tom Wills holds the record as the station's longest-tenured on-air personality, having been with WAVE from 1969 until his retirement in July 2009; Wills stated that he would serve as a fill-in whenever one of the station's meteorologists was on vacation, and announced that he was considering a return to the University of Louisville to teach meteorology as he did for several years. The station celebrated his 40-year tenure with the station during a special two-hour edition of WAVE 3 Listens Live, in which Wills's family and co-workers appeared as guests.
Meteorologist John Belski, who left channel 3 in September 2010 (he now works as a severe weather specialist for WLKY), received numerous awards during his 20+ years at WAVE, including being named "Best Of Louisville" by the readers of Louisville Magazine for a number of years and was named "Best of Kentucky" by the readers of Kentucky Monthly magazine, as well as receiving the LEO's Readers' Choice Award and a "Best of the Best" award from Louisville Magazine (which is given to people and organizations that have won the "Best of Louisville" award more than 10 times). Belski anchored severe weather coverage that earned him and the station several Emmy Awards; he was also presented the prestigious Mark Trail Award for bringing public awareness to weather radios as a lifeline during severe weather, which was presented to Belski on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Sports director Kent Taylor was voted "Kentucky TV Sportscaster of the Year" by the Associated Press in 2008, 2009 and 2012.
On June 30, 2008, WAVE became the first television station in the Louisville market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition. WAVE is the only one of two stations that broadcast at least some portion of their newscasts in HD; footage shot in-studio is broadcast in high definition, while all news video from on-remote locations is broadcast in standard definition.
In March 2011, WAVE and WHAS-TV began sharing a news helicopter supplied by St. Louis-based Helicopters Inc., through a Local News Service agreement, allowing the two stations to share news video, especially during breaking news events, while also partitioning time for individual use of the chopper. The starboard side of the copter displays a "Sky 11" decal (referencing WHAS-TV), while the port side carries the "Air 3" logo (referencing WAVE).[15]
Following a disappointing November 2011 sweeps period, WAVE moved its midday newscast from noon to 11 a.m. in January 2012. With the change, WAVE is the only station in the market whose midday newscast airs in the 11 a.m. timeslot (however, WDRB has carried a newscast at 11:30 a.m. since 1999). The midday newscast was rebroadcast at 1 p.m. on independent station WBNA (channel 21). In 2013, WAVE began airing rebroadcasts of its 7 and 7:30 p.m. newscasts on its Bounce TV-affiliated third digital subchannel at 8 p.m. In 2016, the 7 and 7:30 p.m. newscasts began simulcasting live on Bounce 3.2.
The station added a half-hour 3 p.m. newscast on January 28, 2019; it expanded to a full hour on September 9. On April 24, 2020, WAVE added an additional hour of news each weekday at 4 p.m.
- Foster Brooks – show host
- Mary Ann Childers – reporter
- Allen Denton – anchor
- Emily Gimmel – teen feature reporter
- Steve Kmetko – anchor (1981–1982)
- Dave Nakdimen – reporter (1961–1997)
Sports programming
During the 1990s and 2000s, WAVE carried Southeastern Conference football and basketball through Jefferson-Pilot Sports (later Lincoln Financial Sports) which merged into Raycom Sports in 2007–08, although some football games were aired on WBKI-TV or WFTE (now WBKI). This ended in 2009 when Raycom Sports, coincidentally a subsidiary of WAVE's current owner, lost the rights to ESPN Regional Television at the end of the 2008–09 basketball season. The SEC syndication package by ESPN Plus ended up with WBNA throughout the 2009–2014 existence of the syndicated SEC Network (later SEC TV).
In 2014, after the University of Louisville joined the Atlantic Coast Conference, WAVE and WHAS-TV began sharing Raycom Sports' ACC Network package until its discontinuation in 2019.[16]
As the network's affiliate for the region, WAVE serves as the de facto flagship station for NBC Sports' coverage of the Kentucky Derby; in 1949, WAVE was the first broadcaster to ever produce television coverage of the race.[5] Presently, WAVE carries locally produced coverage of Kentucky Oaks
