The station first signed on the air on September 11, 1989, as WHSL, originally operating as a full simulcast of the Home Shopping Network (HSN).
The move came after HSN reduced the number of local commercial minutes per hour from 5 to 2 and after Roberts considered leasing the station's airtime to River City Broadcasting (owners of KDNL-TV) or Koplar Communications, which owned KPLR-TV.
It finally found one in KDNL-TV, by then an ABC affiliate, which aired its programming in late night time slots from August 1995 until January 1998.
[9] In July 2002, KPLR decided to disaffiliate from UPN and exclusively align with The WB,[10] a move which would have affected fans of two of the network's most popular series of the period, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Star Trek: Enterprise, forcing them to watch both shows either through UPN-affiliated superstations offered by Dish Network or by way of tape trading.
Roberts management sought to remedy this by obtaining permission from HSN to allow WHSL to preempt two hours a week of programming during prime time to carry both shows starting in September 2002.
In February 2003,[13] Roberts Broadcasting sold a 50% interest in WRBU to the TeleFutura subsidiary of Univision Communications, under the joint venture licensee St. Louis/Denver LLC; under the terms of the deal, Roberts continued to operate the station through a time brokerage agreement and was given right of first refusal on appointees for the directors of WRBU's licensee.
[17][18] On March 9, in a joint announcement by the network and Roberts Broadcasting, WRBU was confirmed as the charter MyNetworkTV affiliate for St.
As a MyNetworkTV affiliate, the station began serving as a backup NBC affiliate during occasions when KSDK (channel 5) was forced to preempt programs from that network due to commitments to air St. Louis Cardinals baseball games, the Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon or locally produced specials,[20] or because of preemptions necessitated to provide breaking news or severe weather coverage.
The group cited the cause of its financial downturn on the loss of the UPN affiliations on WRBU, WZRB and WRBJ-TV, on the basis that much of UPN's programming slate at the time of its shutdown consisted of shows aimed at African Americans and other minority audiences that Roberts felt were compatible with the core viewership of the stations.
[23][24] On February 20, 2012, Roberts announced that the company was exploring the sale of one or all four of its television stations in order to raise sufficient funding to pay off its creditors;[25] the company would eventually sell WRBJ to the Trinity Broadcasting Network in October 2012[26][27] and WZRB to Tri-State Christian Television subsidiary Radiant Light Ministries on December 2, 2013,[28] leaving WRBU as the last station that Roberts had yet to cut a divestiture deal.
[30][31] WRBU became an Ion Television affiliate on February 10, 2014, marking the network's resumption of an over-the-air presence in the St. Louis market.