WHMB
The FCC approved of the sale to Sumrall's LeSea Broadcasting on August 15, 1972. The station resumed broadcasting on November 3 with a new call sign, WHMB-TV, and a schedule of mostly religious programs.[16] It was LeSea's first television property; at the time, it only owned a radio station, WHME in South Bend.[17] In 1974, the station expanded its broadcasting hours, signing on in the late morning; it also acquired the local rights to The 700 Club, which WHMB ran twice each weekday (it eventually ran a 90-minute edition of the program live at 10 a.m., along twice daily repeats of the hour-long version of the program by the latter part of the decade). By that point, the station also began carrying additional secular programming, with a mix of children's programs and westerns airing from about 3 to 6 p.m. The station began broadcasting 18 hours a day in 1975; at that time, WHMB began airing The PTL Club, which it aired in its two-hour broadcast (which was reduced to one hour in 1982) as well as one-hour versions that aired twice a day; the station also aired religious programs from televangelists such as Jimmy Swaggart and Richard Roberts.
In addition, the station also aired a few locally produced shows; Von Saum hosted a weekday afternoon children's program from 1972 until shortly before his death from heart failure in 1993 titled Pirate Adventures with Captain Hook, in which Saum (whose left leg and arm were amputated after he was hit by a car while riding his motorcycle at age 17 in 1960) and other cast members playing Hook's pirates used music and object lessons to teach children about Jesus Christ. Saum, who originated the Captain Hook character after a preacher encouraged him to a develop the character for Saum's children's ministry tours by acquiring a hook for his prosthetic arm and costume, was approached by Sumrall to bring his character to television. WHMB, which later syndicated the series to several countries, dropped the program when it returned recordings of the episodes to the now-deceased Saum years later. Channel 40 also ran twice-a-day airings of a locally produced weekday bible study program hosted by Lester Sumrall, as well as a Christian-oriented music and variety program hosted by the Sumrall family that aired three times a day.
The station began broadcasting on a 24-hour schedule by 1981;[18] around this time, WHMB ran Christian programs from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.; cartoons from 7 to 9 a.m. and 3 to 5 p.m.; classic sitcoms from 1 to 3 p.m.; and a mix of sitcoms and occasional westerns from about 5 to 7 p.m. On Saturdays, the station ran children's and family-oriented secular programming, most of which was drawn from their weekday schedule from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., and religious programming during the nighttime hours, and a schedule consisting entirely of Christian-oriented religious programs on Sundays.
Gradually, by 1983, WHMB carried Christian programming for much of the broadcast day, with breakaway windows for secular programming (including sitcoms, westerns and public domain movies) each weekday from 3 to 6 p.m. and Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. By the 1990s, the station began acquiring somewhat more recent sitcoms from the 1970s and 1980s. WHMB eventually reduced its secular programming (consisting of sitcoms, drama series and lifestyle programs) to 2 to 7 p.m. each weekday and a scattered amount for a few hours a day on Saturdays, along with carrying children's programs complying with the FCC's educational programming guidelines for two hours on Saturday mornings and an hour on Sunday afternoons.
In August 2024, WHMB and South Bend sister station WHME-TV switched their primary channels to Univision.[19] The network was previously affiliated in the market with WIIH-CA from 2003 until 2008, and viewers then received the network's programming through the network's national cable and satellite feed for the next fourteen years.[20]
