WVNS-TV (channel 59) is a television station licensed to Lewisburg, West Virginia, United States, serving the Bluefield–Beckley–Oak Hill market as an affiliate of CBS, Fox, and MyNetworkTV. The station is owned by Nexstar Media Group, and has studios on Old Cline Road in Ghent, West Virginia; its transmitter is near Alderson, West Virginia.
History
The station began broadcasting on August 12, 1995, as WB affiliate WVGV-TV. It was the first station in the market not affiliated with one of the big three networks. The station was originally set to sign-on in 1994 as a Fox affiliate. However, after the station's launch was delayed past the start of the 1994–95 season, Fox canceled the affiliation. WVGV was not successful due to difficulty in selling advertising time due to the network's unproven schedule of sitcoms and urbane programming that would struggle to help the network establish a foothold in rural markets. It was also hamstrung by a UHF signal, in a market where the market's stations were dominant and all carried in VHF, which propagates better across the region's mountainous and rugged terrain. Furthermore, the late sign-on made it difficult to get carriage on the area's cable systems. This was a serious problem since cable is a must for acceptable television in this market, most of which is very mountainous.