It is owned and operated by network majority owner Nexstar Media Group alongside ABC affiliate WGNO (channel 26).

At the same time, Tribune provided financial backing for Jones and other investors to form Qwest Broadcasting and owned a minority stake in the company.

[5] Cypress Broadcasting obtained the construction permit; in order to raise additional capital, the firm added 100 partners in November 1983.

One was turnover in personnel; under Protter and his wife Gail Brekke, the station experienced high attrition of staff, one of whom told local media that the executives were "piranhas".

Protter admitted to Mark Lorando of The Times-Picayune that one reason he had bought into New Orleans was a feeling that WGNO under its previous owners was underperforming; Tribune turned out to be much stiffer competition than anticipated.

[13] Several former employees would later criticize Protter for an extensive use of trade-out deals, in which the station sold advertising in exchange for goods and services instead of cash.

[14] The New Orleans market, which had been showing double-digit advertising revenue growth, suddenly slowed down as the local economy slumped; meanwhile, Tribune exercised its group buying power to deny WNOL-TV the opportunity to bid on movie packages and syndicated programs.

[15] The highly cost-conscious company immediately made major budget cuts; the general and limited partners in Channel 38 Associates lost money in the TVX acquisition.

It used its group buying power and cost philosophy to reduce the station's expenses in syndicated programming and become competitive in new purchases, while frills were eliminated;[16] Protter and Brekke were dismissed.

[16][17][18] Meanwhile, the station ceased its original policy of airing movies uncut to match the rest of the company and because TVX was considering New Orleans as a facility for dubbing programming for distribution throughout the group.

[26] The company was to pay Salomon Brothers $200 million on January 1, 1988, and missed the first payment deadline, having been unable to lure investors to its junk bonds even before the Black Monday stock market crash.

In 1986, the station had 2,900 titles in its movie library, a number that was pared back to 2,300 by March 1989; it had more syndicated shows than it could air, including Spanish-language cartoons.

[31] In September 1989, TVX announced an agreement to sell WNOL-TV to musician Quincy Jones, marking his entrance into television station ownership.

[36][37] On August 25, 1994, it was announced that SF Broadcasting—a partnership with minority-owned communications firm Savoy Pictures in which Fox held a minority stake[38]—would acquire three Burnham stations, including WVUE.

Quincy Jones, along with partners Willie Davis, Don Cornelius, and Geraldo Rivera, became the majority owners of a new company, Qwest Broadcasting.

[42][43] Meanwhile, FCC approval of the SF Broadcasting purchase was delayed by more than a year because of a commission inquiry as to whether Fox was a foreign-owned company as a result of Rupert Murdoch's interest.

[47] In August 1999, WNOL-TV relocated from the Canal Street offices to a 23,000-square-foot (2,100 m2) space on the third floor of the New Orleans Centre shopping mall, a $5.5 million investment.

[52][54] WNOL and WGNO did not operate from the same facility until July 2005, when channel 26 moved from the 28th and 29th floors of the World Trade Center to the New Orleans Centre, where their footprint expanded to 36,000 square feet (3,300 m2).

[60] WGNO–WNOL set up facilities in two double-wide trailers and moved its business operations to Covington; this followed six weeks in which WGNO's newscasts were aired from fellow ABC affiliate WBRZ-TV in Baton Rouge.

[66][67] WGNO began producing a half-hour prime time newscast at 9 p.m. for WNOL-TV on May 1, 2006;[68] news had been planned for a number of years under Tribune management.

[73][74] The station's signal is multiplexed: The 54.1 subchannel of WUPL is broadcast on WNOL-TV as part of the market's ATSC 3.0 (NextGen TV) deployment plan.