WSES (channel 33) is a television station licensed to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, United States, serving the western portion of the Birmingham market as an affiliate of the digital multicast network Heroes & Icons.

Even though Tuscaloosa is 58 miles (93 km) southwest of Birmingham, CBS opted to retain its affiliation with WCFT because, at the time, WBMG suffered from a severely weak broadcast signal that did not provide adequate coverage to all of central Alabama.

Even after channel 42 increased its transmitter power to 1.2 million watts in 1969, it provided marginal to non-existent coverage of much of west-central Alabama.

As part of a broader deal between New World and the Fox Broadcasting Company signed on May 23 of that year, New World agreed to affiliate five of its eight existing television stations and the four it had acquired from Great American with Fox, in a series of affiliation transactions that would take two years to complete due to the varying conclusion dates of their ongoing contracts with either ABC, NBC or CBS.

[6] Due to conflicts with FCC ownership rules of the time period, New World subsequently decided to establish and transfer the licenses of WBRC and WGHP into a trust company, with the intent to sell them to the Fox network's broadcasting subsidiary, Fox Television Stations (in the case of Birmingham, New World could not keep WBRC and WVTM since the FCC then forbade a single company from owning two television stations in the same market; the concurrent Argyle and Citicasters acquisitions also put New World three stations over the FCC's twelve-station ownership limit).

However, the owner of WTTO, Sinclair Broadcast Group, only expressed interest in carrying ABC's prime time and news programming.

Then in January 1996, after it terminated the WNAL deal, Allbritton acquired the non-license assets of CBS affiliate WJSU-TV (channel 40) in Anniston from Osborne Communications Corporation for $12 million (through an LMA arrangement which included an option to eventually purchase the station outright).

[9] However, under Nielsen rules, neither WCFT nor WJSU would have likely been counted in the Birmingham ratings books as it had designated Tuscaloosa and Anniston as separate markets at the time.

[13] On September 1, 1996, when W58CK became an ABC affiliate, WCFT and WJSU concurrently ended separate operations as well and became full-powered satellite stations of W58CK, with Allbritton assuming control of WJSU's operations under the originally proposed LMA, which was transferred to Flagship Broadcasting upon that company's purchase of that station (Allbritton would eventually purchase WJSU-TV outright in 2008).

[17] On March 20, 2014, as part of a restructuring of the Sinclair-Allbritton deal in order to address these ownership conflicts as well as to expedite the Allbritton acquisition because of them due to the FCC's increased scrutiny of outsourcing agreements used to circumvent in-market ownership caps, Sinclair announced that it would retain ownership of WTTO (choosing to retain the LMA between that station and WDBB, and continue operating it as a satellite station of WTTO), and form a new duopoly between it and WBMA+; WABM was to be sold to a third-party buyer with which Sinclair would not enter into an operational outsourcing arrangement or maintain any contingent interest, other than a possible transitional shared facilities agreement until WTTO was able to move its operations from its longtime home on Beacon Parkway West to WBMA's facility in Hoover.

Under the restructured plan, WBMA's programming would be added to WABM's main channel, which would result in the latter's syndicated and MyNetworkTV programming moving to its second digital channel on 68.2 (WBMA-LD itself, as a low-power station, would not be affected as FCC rules allow the ownership of low-power and full-power stations regardless of market ownership caps for duopolies).

[25] Sinclair had reached a similar deal to sell (the original) WCIV in Charleston—another station that was set to be shut down as a result of a similar arrangement involving its MyNetworkTV affiliate in that market, WMMP, due to a grandfathered LMA that station maintained (and subsequently decided to terminate) with Fox affiliate WTAT—to Howard Stirk Holdings.

In order for Sinclair to continue operating WJSU and WCFT and maintain their existing licenses until the FCC ruled on the petition and the sale to HSH, the two stations began providing interim programming as affiliates of Heartland (which both stations had been carrying on their third digital subchannels as WBMA satellites since the network launched as The Nashville Network on November 1, 2012) on October 20, 2014; at that time, WJSU was essentially converted into a satellite of WCFT.

[3][27][28] On March 11, 2015, Howard Stirk Holdings was granted its application to change the call letters of WCFT to WSES;[29] concurrently, WJSU became WGWW.

As a result of the station's sale to Howard Stirk Holdings and Sinclair's decision to move WBMA-LD's programming to a subchannel of WDBB, WCFT-TV discontinued all simulcasts of WBMA's newscasts on September 29, 2014.