Wendell Hansen of Noblesville, filed an application on August 19, 1966, to build a new station in Lawrence, Indiana, on the channel 40 allocation for Indianapolis.

[5] In January 1969, the project was said to be "stalled by construction delays";[6] later that year, the Christian Broadcasting Network filed to purchase the unbuilt station, which would have been its second television property.

[13] White River was heavily undercapitalized for starting a television station, and few viewers were finding their way to tune to the UHF band, even with the recent launch of WFYI on channel 20.

In its largest programming coup, the station managed to secure the rights to rebroadcast Chicago White Sox games midway through the 1971 season.

[15] Broadcast operations were suspended on June 25 ahead of the sale;[16] creditors were already suing in court to try and force the station into bankruptcy.

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.

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.

[20] WHMB's Univision affiliation marks the network's return to the Indianapolis market after its previous affiliate, WIIH-CA, dropped Univision programming after that station's then-owner LIN failed to renew its contract with the network (which expired on December 31, 2008), and adopted a weather-focused programming format, branded as "LWS: Local Weather Station".

WHMB opted against renewing the contract in 2004; the station continues to air high school football and basketball games on Friday nights during the IHSAA athletic season.

The package included some men's basketball games involving the University of Notre Dame Fighting Irish as that school's sports programs (except football) joined the ACC in July 2013.

[22][23] The station's signal is multiplexed: WHMB-TV was the only LeSEA-owned station that was not included in a groupwide affiliation agreement with Cozi TV that was announced on June 17, 2014;[25] the network, which primarily airs classic television series (including some that are currently or have previously aired on WHMB), has been carried locally on the second digital subchannel of NBC affiliate WTHR (channel 13) since March 2013 due to an existing agreement with then-owner Dispatch Broadcast Group and its Class A sister station WALV-CD (channel 46), now a MeTV affiliate since 2016, which is carried on WTHR's third digital subchannel as well.