The station is owned and operated by the Ion Media subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company, and maintains offices on North Cobb Parkway (US 41) in Marietta; its transmitter is located on Bear Mountain, near the Cherokee–Bartow county line.
After operating for two and a half years as a general-entertainment independent station with local news for the Rome area, Sudbrink moved the station into the Atlanta market with a new transmitter facility, new WTLK-TV call letters, and a prime time lineup of local and national talk shows.
The station suffered from an inability to gain channel space on Atlanta's cable systems and by 1993 was mostly airing reruns and country music videos.
[2] AC&T selected the call sign WZGA and proposed a conventional general-entertainment independent station, but it prioritized constructing KOOG-TV in Ogden, Utah, deferring the construction to late 1985 after deciding to move the tower from Mount Alto to a site on Vineyard's Mountain in Bartow County so the station to extend its signal into Cobb County.
Shortly prior, the station changed its call sign to WTLK-TV ahead of its plan to implement a 24-hour talk-show format.
[11][10] In March 1991, WTLK-TV signed a lease for studio facilities in Marietta,[12] en route to a planned June 1 launch of its all-talk format, and picked up two NBC game shows not aired by local affiliate WXIA-TV.
The prime time lineup was finished out with two national syndicated shows: Phil Donahue and Sally Jessy Raphael.
[15] After failing to land a slot on any local cable system, Sudbrink conducted a round of layoffs in September 1991, including Young.
[18] At one point, Boortz was telling his radio listeners that WTLK would end all of its talk shows on January 17, 1992, with no cable slot in sight.
[19] Boortz departed in March 1992, and the next month, Wilson lost his job hosting Talk at Nite when he engaged in an on-air tirade prompted by technical miscues.