A decade of sales
In February 2011, ACME Communications announced a deal to sell the station to Virginia-based Lockwood Broadcast Group. The sale was approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on March 21 with the consummation being completed on May 6.[13][14][15] From 1998 until 2004, the station aired a series of interstitials during children's programming called WB 20 Kids Club (later Dubba Clubba) hosted by comedian Jackson Bailey (known as "Joe Cool"). The interstitials featured information and contests to viewers in several vignettes each weekday covering topics such as science, biology, conservation, music, and pet care.
From 2015 to 2019, WBXX has broadcast Atlantic Coast Conference football and men's basketball games syndicated from the Raycom Sports–operated ACC Network, some of which were shared with the main channel of CBS affiliate WVLT-TV. Those games were previously broadcast on MyNetworkTV affiliate WVLT-DT2 from 2009 until the end of the 2014–2015 season.
On October 1, 2015, Gray Television announced that it would acquire WBXX-TV from Lockwood. The purchase was made as part of Gray's acquisition of the broadcasting assets of Schurz Communications; as part of the deal, Lockwood received KAKE in Wichita, Kansas (which Gray put up for sale following the deal with Schurz), and paid $11.2 million to Gray.[16] Gray (through WVLT-TV, Inc.) took the operations of the station via Local Marketing Agreement.[17] The sale was completed on February 1, 2016.[18]
On June 25, 2018, Gray Television announced that they would acquire the assets of Raycom Media, who had been owned Fox affiliate WTNZ-TV since 1996 for $3.6 billion. Due to FCC rules, Gray kept the existing duopoly of WVLT-TV and WBXX-TV and sell WTNZ, since WTNZ and WVLT-TV rank among the four highest-rated stations in the Knoxville market in total-day viewership.[19][20] On August 20, 2018, it was announced that Gray would sell WTNZ to former owner Lockwood Broadcast Group, who owned WKNX-TV since 2013 in a group deal that see Lockwood to acquire WFXG-TV in Augusta, WPGX-TV in Panama City and WDFX-TV in Dothan.[21] The sale was completed on January 2, 2019.[22]
