WAVE (channel 3) is a television station in Louisville, Kentucky, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Gray Media.

The station first signed on the air on November 24, 1948, originally broadcasting on VHF channel 5 with an effective radiated power of 24,100 watts.

It has remained with NBC since then, and as such, WAVE is the only commercial television station in the Louisville market that has never changed its primary network affiliation.

[7] In 1953, WAVE-TV moved to VHF channel 3, due to signal interference issues with fellow NBC affiliate WLWT in Cincinnati.

In fact, that very jingle served as the image campaign of the Al Ham-composed news music package "Home Country".

WAVE-TV was founded and owned by George W. Norton Jr., a lawyer and financier who had also put WAVE radio (970 AM, now WGTK) on the air in 1933.

They purchased WFIE-TV (Evansville, Indiana) in 1956; WFRV-TV (Green Bay, Wisconsin) and semi-satellite WJMN-TV (Marquette, Michigan) in 1961; and WMT-AM-FM-TV (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) in 1968, all of which shared a common logotype style.

With WAVE-TV-AM serving as the flagship station, Orion greatly expanded its news, weather, editorials, agricultural programs, and documentaries.

News bureaus were set up in Frankfort, Kentucky, and Washington, D.C. As a result, WAVE-TV-AM won a number of national awards, including a Peabody in 1978.

As the radio station promptly changed its call sign to WAVG, Cosmos dropped the "-TV" suffix from the WAVE callsign in 1987.

The cash-and-stock merger transaction valued at $3.6 billion – in which Gray shareholders would acquire preferred stock currently held by Raycom – resulted in WAVE gaining new sister stations in nearby markets, including CBS affiliate WKYT-TV in Lexington (and its semi-satellite WYMT-TV in Hazard) and ABC/Fox affiliate WBKO in Bowling Green, in addition to its current Raycom sister stations.

[14][15] With the acquisition of Meredith Corporation's Local Media division (including WSMV-TV in Nashville) on December 1, 2021, Gray now owns stations in every market in or surrounding Kentucky.

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.

On June 30, 2008, WAVE became the first television station in the Louisville market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition.

[16] Following a disappointing November 2011 sweeps period,[citation needed] WAVE moved its midday newscast from noon to 11 a.m. in January 2012.

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.

On December 20, 2017, the Frankfort Plant Board announced that it would drop WAVE and competitor WHAS on January 1, 2018 in order to curb rising retransmission consent costs that were being passed on to its customers.

FPB also began carrying Grit from WAVE-DT4 on channel 98 following the discontinuation of the network on in-market ABC affiliate WTVQ-DT's seventh subchannel.