WLOV-TV

CW+ affiliate in West Point, Mississippi

WLOV TV (channel 27) is a television station licensed to West Point, Mississippi, United States, serving as the CW+ affiliate for the Columbus–Tupelo market. It is owned by Coastal Television Broadcasting Company, which maintains a shared services agreement (SSA) with Morris Multimedia, owner of Columbus licensed CBS/Fox/MyNetworkTV affiliate WCBI TV (channel 4), for the provision of certain services. The two stations share studios on 5th Street South in Downtown Columbus; WLOV TV's transmitter is located in Woodland, Mississippi.

The station signed on as WVSB TV on May 29, 1983, as the third commercial station in the market. It was supposed to launch on May 1, but equipment and weather delays pushed the date back. Originally owned by Venture Systems and airing an analog signal on UHF channel 27, WVSB immediately took the ABC affiliation from WTVA (channel 9), a primary NBC affiliate, which carried ABC programming on a secondary basis. From its start, the station had the disadvantage of being a UHF band television station competing with two well established VHF stations. Love Communications would buy WVSB in 1991 and changed the call sign to WLOV TV on September 9. Despite efforts to educate viewers about obtaining the station, competition from WCBI TV and WTVA was fierce. In May 1992, it entered into a program service agreement (predecessor to local marketing agreement) with WTVA. On November 25 of that year, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) cleared the deal allowing WLOV to move its facilities from West Point to Tupelo. At first, WLOV moved into offices in the Tupelo Community Antenna (now Comcast) building, but it was eventually integrated into WTVA's studios in Saltillo. Lingard Broadcasting Corporation purchased the station in August 1994, continuing the partnership with WTVA. At the same time, WLOV became a secondary Fox affiliate. Before that, cable systems in the area piped in the network's affiliates in Memphis (WMKW TV/WLMT, WPTY TV after 1990) or Birmingham (WDBB, WTTO after 1990). On October 10, 1995, WLOV dropped ABC completely, and became a full Fox affiliate, leaving Northeast Mississippi and the part of West Alabama the station served without a local affiliate until the launch of WKDH on June 18, 2001. During that period, cable systems in the area continued to carry WPTY and those on the Alabama side of the market began to import WCFT TV from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, when it became a satellite of ABC affiliate WBMA LP in September 1996 after WBRC affiliated with Fox. During the late 1990s, WLOV also served as a secondary affiliate of UPN. In September 2002, UPN moved to WCBI DT2. WLOV's digital signal on UHF channel 16 signed on August 22, 2004, and upgraded to full powered high definition level in April 2007. On April 1 of that year, WLOV launched a new second digital subchannel to be the market's This TV affiliate. Although not initially carried on digital cable systems, WLOV DT2 was eventually picked up by carriage agreements. On September 1, 2012, WLOV added MeTV to digital subchannel 27.2; the network relocated from WTVA, which switched the affiliation of its second digital subchannel from MeTV to ABC on that date, due to the August 31 shutdown of WKDH (which WTVA DT2 effectively replaced the affiliate for the Columbus–Tupelo–West Point market). This TV was relocated to a new third digital subchannel to make room for MeTV. Lingard Broadcasting filed to sell WLOV to Tupelo Broadcasting on December 21, 2012; the new owners continued the station's agreements with WTVA. The sale was consummated on August 13. Heartland Media announced its purchase of WTVA from the Spain family on September 16, 2014; while WLOV TV itself was not included in the deal as it is owned separately, Heartland inherited WTVA's agreements with WLOV. Three weeks later, on October 7, Coastal Television Broadcasting Company (which owns fellow Fox affiliate KTBY in Anchorage, Alaska) announced that it would acquire WLOV. Both transactions were completed on February 11, 2015. Since the late 2010s, WLOV primarily identified using its call sign instead of the network mandated Fox 27, although it included the Fox logo in its station identification. On February 1, 2024, it was announced that the Fox affiliation would move from WLOV to WCBI DT2 the next day. WLOV would assume WCBI DT2's CW Plus affiliation.

WLOV TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 27, on February 17, 2009, the original target date on which full power television stations in the United States were to transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate (which was later pushed back to June 12, 2009). The station's digital signal remained on its pre transition UHF channel 16, using virtual channel 27.