WVLA-TV (channel 33) is a television station in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by White Knight Broadcasting, which maintains joint sales and shared services agreements (JSA/SSA) with Nexstar Media Group, owner of Fox affiliate WGMB-TV (channel 44), CW owned-and-operated station WBRL-CD (channel 21) and independent station KZUP-CD (channel 19), for the provision of certain services. The stations share studios on Perkins Road in Baton Rouge, while WVLA-TV's transmitter is located near Addis, Louisiana. History The station first signed on the air on October 16, 1971 as WRBT, an ABC affiliate. The station was founded by Romac Baton Rouge Corporation, a consortium of Southern Educators Life Insurance Company and local businessmen Richard O. Rush and Ramon V. Jarrell, with its call letters standing for "Romac Broadcasting Television". The station temporarily operated from Florida Boulevard before moving to studios on Essen Lane, where it stayed until 2000. Before WRBT began, ABC was limited to off-hours clearances on then-NBC affiliate WBRZ-TV (channel 2) and CBS affiliate WAFB-TV (channel 9). On paper, Baton Rouge had been large enough to support three full network affiliates since at least the 1950s. However, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) only assigned two VHF allocations to Baton Rouge, channels 2 and 9–occupied by WBRZ and WAFB. With Baton Rouge sandwiched between New Orleans to the east, Lafayette to the west, and south, Jackson to the north, and Alexandria to the north, it is not likely there would have been enough room to drop in a third VHF allocation for Baton Rouge. There was an effort to move the transmitter of proposed Houma television station KHMA to the Greater Baton Rouge area in 1964 to serve as the city's ABC affiliate, with that management of that station going as far as to establish an advertising office in Baton Rouge; however, the owners of WAFB and WBRZ successfully petitioned the FCC to block the transfer, citing the urge of UHF development in the area. The FCC did not mandate all-channel tuning until 1964. Before then, UHF stations could only viewable with an expensive converter, and picture quality was marginal at best even with one. By the late 1960s, however, all-channel sets had gained enough penetration to make a commercial UHF station in Baton Rouge viable. WRBT originally broadcast from 10:30 a.m. until midnight on Mondays thru Fridays; 7 a.m. until midnight on Saturdays; and 9