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WNYB (channel 26) is areligious television station licensed toJamestown, New York, United States, serving theBuffalo area as anowned-and-operated station ofTri-State Christian Television (TCT). Its transmitter is located on Center Road inArkwright. WNYB maintained studios on Big Tree Road inOrchard Park until TCT ended local operations in June 2018.

WNYB operates a digital replacement translator on channel 27 to cover Buffalo proper. The station is also relayed onlow-powertranslatorWNIB-LD (channel 42) inRochester.

The first license for channel 26 in Jamestown was granted to WNYP in 1966. The station's majority shareholder wasLowell W. "Bud" Paxson, who at the time owned Jamestown'sWKSN radio and later co-founded the Home Shopping Network (HSN).^[3] It was the first American television station toaffiliate with a Canadian network, signing a deal withCTV. Since the station could not afford a direct feed, station engineers switched to and from the signal of CTV'sflagshipCFTO-TV (channel 9) inToronto whenever network programming was airing. WNYP was Paxson's first venture into television.

WNYP quickly became notorious and almost legendary among Western New York's broadcast community for technical gaffes and programming mishaps.^{[citation needed]} For instance, the station showed the same episode ofThe Aquanauts several times, every day at the same time, over a two-week period. Also, the equipment used to pick up the off-air signal from CFTO would sometimes relay the video from another station broadcasting on VHF channel 9 instead (such asABC affiliateWNYS-TV inSyracuse orCBS affiliateWWTV inCadillac, Michigan) due totropospheric propagation overwhelming CFTO's signal. Often, when CFTO programming actually was being rebroadcast, the station switcher failed to drop CFTO's identification to display the WNYP callsign, which was considered a violation ofFederal Communications Commission (FCC) rules. Inexplicably, the audio line from a Jamestown radio station could sometimes be heard in the background when CTV programming was airing. Paxson also earned significant animus for airing programming fromCHCH-TV (channel 11) andCBC Television'sCBLT (channel 5) without permission. Although it had been legal to broadcast foreign programming in the United States without permission as a result of laws passed duringWorld War II, he forgot to securecopyrights for the Canadian shows, and the programs' copyright holders won judgments against WNYP for infringement.^[4]

Since CTV, then as now, relies largely on American programming, Buffalo's"Big 3" U.S. network affiliates—WBEN-TV (channel 4, nowWIVB-TV); WGR-TV (channel 2, nowWGRZ); andWKBW-TV (channel 7)—threatened legal action in early 1969. Faced with the loss of its primary source of programming, WNYP cut back its local newscasts, laid off staff, and briefly attempted to use a prototype of what would become HSN's on-air product sales strategy to stay afloat. It briefly started to identify as WJTV, but quickly reverted to WNYP becausea station inJackson, Mississippi, already had those call letters. The death knell for the station sounded with the announcement thatWUTV would sign on from Buffalo in 1970. Buffalo was not big enough at the time to support twoindependent stations, so Paxson opted to take the station off the air. (Paxson later started the Pax TV network, now known asIon, which broadcasts onWPXJ-TV (channel 51) in the market; coincidentally, Pax/Ion has also imported much of its programming from CTV over the course of its history.)

After going dark, the station's equipment was sold toElmira ABC affiliateWENY-TV (channel 36), who used much of it to aid in its launch. The channel 26 allocation was used for much of the 1970s and 1980s by a low-power experimentalAppalachian Television Service "translator" relay station (W26AA) ofWNED-TV from Buffalo, operated by the regionalBoard of Cooperative Educational Services, which was able to originate local programming from studios inFredonia. Channel 26 is the last remaining survivor of WNED-TV's once massive translator network that had several repeaters scattered throughout the Southern Tier of Western New York; all of the others were shut down by 2012.

A new license was re-issued to a new group years later, and channel 26 signed on again on September 24, 1988, under the new call letters WTJA. Part of the station's programming lineup duplicated those on the Buffalo stations. It operated on a low budget, heavily relying onpublic domain material, and the station was virtually ignored by local advertisers. Buffalo-area cable providers refused to carry the station because its signal was barely acceptable even under the best conditions; its "Grade B" signal coverage barely reached the southern Buffalo suburbs. Under the circumstances, the station never thrived, and once again went dark in 1991.

Grant Broadcasting purchased the license in 1995. Rather than immediately putting the station back on the air, Grant negotiated withMarion, Illinois–based Tri-State Christian Television, owner of WNYB (channel 49), for the channel 49 license, in exchange for the channel 26 license, cash and a new, more powerful broadcasting facility in Arkwright. The facility featured one of the tallest towers in the region, atop one of the highest hills of western New York State. This changed channel 26 from having a very poor signal to one of the largest coverage areas in the Northeast. It provided at least secondary coverage fromErie, Pennsylvania, to the southwest suburbs of Toronto. Tri-State accepted and on January 10, 1997, it took over the channel 26 license and moved the WNYB intellectual unit there. Grant in turn took over channel 49, which becameWB affiliateWNYO-TV; it became aMyNetworkTV affiliate in 2006 when The WB merged withUPN to formCW.

In June 2018, after more than 21 years, TCT announced it had ceased local programming and was placing its former studios on Big Tree Road inOrchard Park up for sale. The change came with the elimination of the FCC's Main Studio Rule earlier in the year and a decision by TCT to consolidate all programming operations at the network's headquarters in Marion, Illinois.^[5]

The station's signal ismultiplexed:

WNYB ended regular programming on its analog signal, overUHF channel 26, in early May 2009. The station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 27 to channel 26.^[8] The station switched to low VHF channel 5 on August 2, 2019, as part of the FCC's spectrum incentive auction.^[9]

WNYB was previously relayed onClass A stationWBNF-CD (channel 15) in Buffalo; in 2023, this station switched to Spanish-language religious programming.

• Official website

• 1988 establishments in New York (state)
• Buzzr affiliates
• Get (TV network) affiliates
• Jamestown, New York
• MeTV Toons affiliates
• Religious television stations in New York (state)
• Television channels and stations established in 1988
• Television stations in Buffalo, New York
• Tri-State Christian Television stations
• WEST (TV network) affiliates

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