Since the arrival of cable in the market in the late 1970s, Huntington– Charleston's CBS affiliate- WCHS-TV until 1986, and future sister station WOWK since then-had served as the default CBS affiliate for the West Virginia side of the market while WDBJ in Roanoke served the Virginia portion.

In fact, CBS programming hadn't been available over-the-air at all in the area since ABC affiliate WOAY-TV dropped the CBS Evening News and Captain Kangaroo from its schedule in the early 1970s it had dropped most of its CBS programming in 1967. Prior to 2001, Bluefield–Beckley–Oak Hill was one of the few markets in the Eastern Time Zone without full service from the Big Three networks.

Relief really didn't come until WVSX changed its affiliation to CBS on September 29, 2001. The current logo is based on this logo a version without the CBS eye is still used as an alternate logo. WVNS-TV's logo from 2003 to 2013, similar to the other West Virginia Media Holdings stations. The station continued to struggle financially. However, due to problems with the transmitter's unique power supply design, it did not transmit regularly until after January 1, 1997. The station returned to the air on Decemas Fox affiliate WVSX. The new owners took the station dark in order to relocate the studios from Lewisburg to Ghent (between Beckley and Bluefield) and move the transmitter site from Cross Mountain to a more central location to better serve Beckley and Bluefield as well as Lewisburg. This was a serious problem since cable is a must for acceptable television in this market, most of which is very mountainous.īy May, when cable systems in the area were ready to carry the station, WVGV had agreed to be sold to High Mountain Broadcasting. Furthermore, the late sign-on made it difficult to get carriage on the area's cable systems. It was also hamstrung by a UHF signal, in a market where the market's stations were dominant and all carried in VHF, which propagates better across the region's mountainous and rugged terrain. WVGV was not successful due to difficulty in selling advertising time due to the network's unproven schedule of sitcoms and urbane programming that would struggle to help the network establish a foothold in rural markets. However, after the station's launch was delayed past the start of the 1994–95 season, Fox canceled the affiliation. The station was originally set to sign-on in 1994 as a Fox affiliate. It was the first station in the market not affiliated with one of the big three networks. The station began broadcasting on Augas WB affiliate WVGV-TV.

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