WNKY (channel 40) is a television station in Bowling Green, Kentucky, United States, affiliated with NBC and CBS.

The three stations share studios on Chestnut Street in downtown Bowling Green; WNKY's transmitter is located on Pilot Knob near Smiths Grove, Kentucky.

[3] In 1988, Bob Rodgers, president of Word Broadcasting of Louisville, purchased the construction permit about two years after he successfully launched upstart station WBNA in that city.

[4]: 314  Early on, it struggled in a small market used to all-VHF stations, where ABC affiliate WBKO (channel 13) was all but dominant in Bowling Green proper along with the "Big Three" VHF stations based in Nashville, were easily received either over-the-air or via cable and had equal loyalty that WQQB struggled to overcome.

[7] This came as Word Broadcasting president Bob Rodgers assumed additional duties as church pastor in the Louisville area, and his decision to concentrate solely on operating WBNA in terms of the company's media efforts.

For WQQB's first few months under Southeastern ownership, it switched to a general entertainment format with a mixture of low-budget syndicated programming, like old movies (some of which were sourced from public domain media), sitcoms, and cartoons; this was done in preparation of becoming a network affiliate.

[26] Meanwhile, Louisville Fox affiliate WDRB had been carried on cable systems in Hart and Metcalfe counties, along with the Glasgow Electric Plant Board.

[27] In November 2002, Northwest Broadcasting sold WNKY to Max Media for $7 million;[28] the sale was approved by the FCC in March 2003.

[29][30][31] On December 12 of that year, it signed on a digital signal on UHF channel 16 from its transmitter tower and facility in Smiths Grove.

WNKY-DT was then added alongside its analog counterpart to local digital cable systems, including Insight in Bowling Green and the Electric Plant Board in Glasgow.

[29] On June 3, 2010, as a result of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act of 2010, Dish Network began offering both of WNKY's NBC and CBS-affiliated digital subchannels,[33] the latter of which was launched in February 2007.

[34] On November 5, 2013, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fined the station's licensee, MMK License, $39,000 due to a mid-June 2012 ad for a local sports apparel store that was filmed and aired by WNKY, which featured Emergency Alert System (EAS) tones used in a promotional and non-warning situation.

[35][36] On January 1, 2015, the Glasgow Electric Plant Board dropped both of WNKY's digital subchannels from its lineup because of a 1,000 percent increase in cost.

[44] It was officially launched as WNKY-DT2 on February 1, 2007, which finally gave Bowling Green a locally based CBS station.

Some cable systems in the Bowling Green market, especially in the Glasgow area, also carried Louisville-based WLKY (and prior to 1990, WHAS-TV) as a backup CBS affiliate.

[45] In December 2017, WNKY claimed exclusivity of NBC and CBS affiliates on the Glasgow Electric Plant Board cable system.

In January 2018, the CBS subchannel was upgraded to high definition, albeit in 720p rather than the network's recommended 1080i format to preserve bandwidth.

As the first commercial television station to launch in Bowling Green, WBKO has been a longtime leader according to Nielsen ratings.

[4] However, by 1996, the newscasts ended due to low ratings on WKNT's part, due to WBKO's continued dominance in news ratings in the Bowling Green area, and financial difficulties, especially in 1995, when the Associated Press filed a civil lawsuit against the station for back payments for the AP Newspower reports utilized by the station.

Instead of full newscasts, it offers weekday morning and nightly local weather forecast cut-ins provided through AccuWeather.

It aired for a half-hour at 6:30 a.m.[30] The newspaper provides short local news updates and WNKY produces traditional weather segments.

The station's signal is multiplexed: On June 12, 2009, WNKY turned off its analog transmitter in compliance with the FCC-mandated digital TV transition of 2009.

[65][66] After the FCC's 2016 spectrum auction, WNKY filed for a construction permit for its digital subchannel to relocate to UHF channel 24.

WNKY is available over-the-air and on all cable television systems throughout the Bowling Green DMA, which includes Barren,[32] Butler,[45] Edmonson,[45] Hart, Metcalfe and Warren counties in southern Kentucky.

[70] The station's NBC and CBS subchannels were later dropped from all Suddenlink cable channel lineups in that county, including Russellville.