Woods sold the station to KM Communications in 1990; the same year MuchMusic programming was dropped, and replaced with the viewer request music network The Box.
In July 2014, the station was taken dark for financial reasons, likely due to fines from the FCC resulting from the station's lack of updates to both its public file and educational and informational programming reporting file, the latter of which had not had the public file components updated for 3+1⁄2 years; this resulted in a total fine of $20,000, with an appeal of the amount for financial purposes denied as the FCC determined that WMKE-CA and Chicago sister station WOCK-CD were under the same ownership and had the financial ability to pay the fine.
[3] On July 30, 2014, the sale of WMKE-CA was announced for $2.5 million to LocusPoint Networks, which is known for purchasing television stations as part of the FCC's upcoming spectrum incentive auction.
Shortly thereafter, LocusPoint announced the sale of WMKE-CD to the Milwaukee Media subsidiary of CNZ Communications, which already owned WIWN (channel 68) in the market (the station was sold in 2024).
At the beginning of 2020, it switched to carrying Court TV, repeating programming seen on WTMJ-DT5; after Court TV found cable coverage in the market through WTMJ sister station WPXE-DT3, WMKE's primary affiliation switched to Jewelry Television (itself also repeating on WPXE's sixth subchannel as of March 27, 2023).