So committed is WAVE Louisville to local content that the station has no syndicated programming, a rarity among TV outlets. WAVE has long been devoted to its tireless local approach, and stepped it up when COVID became a major story earlier this year. Civil unrest, a giant story in Louisville due to Breonna Taylor living there before her death, followed. 

WAVE, part of Gray Television, is local from 4:30 a.m. until primetime on weekdays, except for Today, Days of Our Lives and NBC Nightly News. That includes business program Listens Live! 12 p.m-1 p.m., public affairs show WAVE Country with Dawne Gee 2-3 p.m. and local news 4 to 5 p.m., added in April and replacing Family Feud. A live hour of news at 7 p.m. has been in place for around a decade. 

“We are all in, because it’s working,” said Ken Selvaggi, VP/general manager. “People are watching.” 

WAVE does not subscribe to Nielsen. For Comscore ratings in September, it had a 4.5 in sign on/sign off, ahead of WLKY’s 4.4, WDRB’s 4.1 and WHAS’s 2.8. 

Saturday news starts at 5 a.m. Saturday and Sunday 9 a.m. newscasts were added Oct. 3, leading out of Inside the Cards, a look at Louisville Cardinals sports. 

The station also runs a variety of spontaneous local programming, such as church services during Holy Week in April, a 10-part reading series on behalf of Louisville’s libraries, and specials related to Juneteenth. “We just got into the mindset of doing local content for organizations who couldn’t have their events,” said Selvaggi. (The Louisville TV market is profiled in the new issue of B+C. Selvaggi spoke after that story’s deadline.)

WAVE airs Secrets of Bluegrass Chefs 7 p.m. Saturdays, and various local programming, including high school sports show GameOn, with sports director Kent Taylor and former NFL star Deion Branch among the hosts, at 7:30. That hour used to have Family Feud. On Sundays, it runs Gray Television’s Full Court Press with Greta Van Susteren.

The station added five people to the newsroom this year. Selvaggi said WAVE is the oldest TV station in Kentucky. “This is an extension of who we are, and what we do,” said Selvaggi. “This is in our DNA.”

Google Fiber said it’s “standing with Louisville” as the city faces an AT&T lawsuit filed Thursday alleging that the city doesn’t have the authority to streamline a pole attachment process that could make it easier for newcomers, such as Google Fiber, to deploy networks there.

AT&T, which has targeted Louisville as an expansion city for its fiber-based GigaPower service, holds that the city lacked jurisdiction when it voted, 23-0, on February 11 to adopt a "One Touch Make Ready" ordinance that would give Google Fiber and others accelerated access to utility poles and other city rights-of-way.

Under the ordinance, Google Fiber and other third parties would be held accountable for damage cost. But AT&T, which views the ordinance as invalid, argued that giving such access to those poles would cause "irreparable harm that cannot be addressed by recovery of damages." According to theCourier-Journal, Louisville estimates that AT&T owns between 25% to 40% of the city’s utility poles.

"We have filed an action to challenge the ordinance as unlawful,” AT&T said in a statement. “Google can attach to AT&T’s poles once it enters into AT&T’s standard Commercial Licensing Agreement, as it has in other cities. This lawsuit is not about Google. It’s about the Louisville Metro Council exceeding its authority."

Time Warner Cable also raised objections following the vote, arguing that the Kentucky Public Service Commission, and not the state, has jurisdiction on pole attachment terms, including rates.

Chris Levendos, director of National Deployment and Operations at Google Fiber, responded Friday to the AT&T lawsuit via this blog post, noting that Google Fiber “stands with the City of Louisville and the other cities across the country that are taking steps to bring faster, better broadband to their residents,” noting that the so-called “One Touch Make Ready” rule reduces costs, disruption and delays.

“Google Fiber is disappointed that AT&T has gone to court in an effort to block Louisville's efforts to increase broadband and video competition. We are confident the City's common-sense initiative will be upheld,” Levendos wrote.

Google Fiber currently labels Louisville as a “potential” expansion city. Though Google Fiber is deploying most of its networks from scratch, it has begun to enlist some new deployment strategies to accelerate service deployment, including the use of existing fiber to serve select parts of Atlanta and San Francisco. Google Fiber has also announced this week that it plans to offer services on a planned municipal fiber network being built in Huntsville, Ala.