The station suddenly went dark on June 19, 1970, after it lost a bid to obtain the ABC affiliation for Dayton to WKEF (channel 22); it soon thereafter filed for bankruptcy.

The current incarnation of channel 26 dates from September 7, 1980, when Miami Valley Christian Television (MVCT) returned it to the air as a Christian-oriented station under the call sign WTJC (for "Witnessing 'Til Jesus Comes").

The primary owner of MVCT, Marvin Sparks, bought out his partners' shares in 1991 and in turn sold them to Video Mall Communications.

In the mid-1990s, Abry Communications (which had purchased WRGT-TV's owner, Act III Broadcasting) approached MVCT with a proposal to manage WTJC for 18 hours a day.

Paxson kept a similar lineup for WTJC, airing religious programming in early mornings, infomercials for most of the day and worship music overnight.

On June 4, 2010, it was announced that the LIN TV Corporation (owner of WDTN) would begin to operate WBDT through shared service and joint sales agreements.

[3][4] WBDT was to leave its longtime studios on Corporate Place, off Byers Road in Miamisburg, in October and move to WDTN's facility in Moraine.

As of January 27, 2013, the former WBDT studio facility is now occupied by Sinclair Broadcast Group's virtual duopoly of ABC affiliate WKEF and Fox affiliate WRGT-TV (the move made them the last network-affiliated stations in Dayton to have upgraded their local programming, including newscasts, to high definition).

[6] The FCC approved the sale and license transfer in April 2011; the commission also denied objections from area cable operators Time Warner Cable and Buckeye Cablevision, who claimed that retransmission fees for WBDT would increase as a result of the sale.

[10][11][12][13][14] On March 13, LIN and Dish entered into a retransmission consent agreement, and all affected channels were restored.

[22] On September 16, 2002, the nationally syndicated morning show The Daily Buzz premiered from WBDT's studios.

On August 18, 2007, WDTN began to produce a nightly half-hour prime time newscast for WBDT known as 2 News at 10 on Dayton's CW.

On the 26th day of its broadcast, this show achieved higher ratings than WRGT-TV's nightly prime time news (produced by WKEF) in Dayton's metered market households.

[23] The station's signal is multiplexed: WBDT shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 26, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate.