The sale of his other TV station permits led to a congressional investigation, and Overmyer's heavily indebted warehouse interests experienced financial reverses en route to a bankruptcy reorganization filing in 1973.

That changed after Malrite Communications Group acquired WNWO-TV in 1996 and launched a comprehensive effort including building expansion and expanded newscasts.

After the dispute ended, Sinclair attempted another revamp of the news department, to no avail in raising the station's flagging ratings fortunes.

In 1962, FCC chairman Newton Minow told the National Press Club that Toledo was one of several cities that could support a third local commercial station but lacked it in large part because the third allocation was a UHF channel.

[7] Springfield suggested the substitution of a lower channel, 17, and consequent shifts in multiple allotments as distant as Mount Pleasant, Michigan, to make room.

These were complemented by some syndicated series and a nightly newscast at 11 p.m.[16] When Overmyer sold his other TV station construction permits—all in major markets—to American Viscose Corporation (AVC) in 1967, WDHO-TV was not included in the sale.

The lead contractor for the warehouses owed $18 million to shareholders early in 1967,[23] placing that company in financial distress and resulting in liens on multiple unfinished buildings.

[37] This prompted the FCC to conduct a hearing on the AVC sale to determine if fraud had been committed[38] and to defer WDHO's license renewal.

[39] Administrative law judge Herbert Sharfman, in his initial decision on April 20, 1973, found Overmyer had overstated his total out-of-pocket expenses by $227,000 but ruled there was no direct evidence of maliciousness or fraud.

[48][49] In 1971, Overmyer pledged the stock of the subsidiary that held WDHO-TV's license to the First National Bank of Boston (FNBB) as security for a $6 million loan.

[60][61] FNBB was awarded control of WDHO on March 25, 1981, by the Cleveland court, despite Overmyer's objection that the order violated FCC rules on ownership transfers for licenses.

[59] Cleveland bankruptcy court judge John Ray, Jr., ruled against Overmyer on September 24, 1982, determining that he and an associate, attorney Edmund M. Connery, engaged in fraud against FNBB.

[50][66] Comparing the fraud to Twyne's Case of 1601,[67] Judge Ray ordered a constructive trust to dispose of all assets belonging to Overmyer, including WDHO, and FNBB seized outright control of the station.

[50] FNBB also seized control of a subsidiary nominally in Overmyer's daughters' name that was applying to construct a new television station in Yuma, Arizona.

[71] Becker and Pompadur had previously teamed to start Television Station Partners, which was formed from the management buyout of Ziff-Davis Broadcasting in 1982.

[73][74] The new owners changed the station's call letters to the current WNWO-TV, for Northwest Ohio, on June 1, 1986, two weeks after the sale closed.

The early news was returned to 5:30 p.m., where it had aired until January 1989,[79] in hopes of attracting a larger audience and based on the station's past relative success with the time slot.

The effect of ABC's rejection was to uphold the January 29 date, keeping the Super Bowl on WTVG and depriving channel 24 of advertising revenue.

In response, in mid-October, Cornwell began preempting low-rated ABC national news shows, including Nightline and This Week with David Brinkley, in favor of local infomercials and car sales programs that brought in revenue for the station.

[88] Shortly after, the stations agreed to switch on October 28, 1995, with NBC loaning satellite dishes to help WNWO make the change.

It saw an opportunity to improve channel 24's local programming to match the ratings of the highly popular NBC; company director of planning David Maltz declared immediately that an 11 p.m. newscast would be started once Malrite took control.

[59] Shortly after unveiling the improvements at WNWO, Malrite sold its television stations to Raycom Media in a deal announced in April 1998.

[96] Under news director Lou Hebert, who had worked at channel 24 in the late 1970s and returned in 2002, WNWO's newscasts made gains among ratings and critics.

He was replaced by a news director from Cincinnati who lacked experience in the Toledo area; assignment editor Matt Zaleski later told The Blade, "That's when my reaction was, 'My God, I've got a front-row seat to a train wreck.

It chose to keep WTOL and sold WNWO-TV, along with a variety of stations in conflict markets like Toledo and areas outside of Raycom's focus in the Midwest and Southeast, to Barrington Broadcasting.

[99] The station replaced its existing logo and "NBC 24" brand, used since the 1996 affiliation switch, in 2011 with a blue square containing the letters WNWO.

Interim general manager Ben Tucker, who had been brought back to Toledo in an attempt to boost ratings and morale, noted that the station had struggled with extreme turnover.

[103] Shortly after the sale was completed, Sinclair and Buckeye CableSystem, the dominant cable television provider in Toledo, entered into a retransmission consent dispute.

[106] After the dispute ended, in August, longtime Toledo news anchor Laura Emerson—who had spent 16 years at WUPW—returned to the market to co-anchor the station's evening newscasts.

The evening anchor team was shared with another newscast produced from South Bend for an out-of-market station: Ryan Cummings and Dayne Marae also presented the local news for WOLF-TV in Scranton, Pennsylvania.