WLNS-TV (channel 6) is a television station in Lansing, Michigan, United States, affiliated with CBS. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group, which provides certain services to dual ABC/CW+ affiliate WLAJ (channel 53) under a shared services agreement (SSA) with Mission Broadcasting. WLNS-TV and WLAJ share studios on East Saginaw Street in Lansing's Eastside section; through a channel sharing agreement, the stations transmit using WLAJ's spectrum from a tower on Van Atta Road in Okemos, Michigan. History WJIM-TV The station signed on May 1, 1950, as WJIM-TV and was owned by Harold F. Gross along with WJIM radio (1240 AM), through WJIM, Inc. It is Michigan's second-oldest television station outside Detroit (behind WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids). Gross had started WJIM, the oldest continually operated commercial radio station in Lansing, in 1934; both stations were named after his son Jim. According to local legend, Gross won the original radio license in a card game. WJIM-TV originally carried programming from all four networks: ABC, DuMont, NBC, and CBS; it was, and always has been, a primary CBS affiliate. ABC disappeared from the schedule in 1958 when WJRT-TV signed on from Flint. DuMont programming disappeared when the network ceased operations in 1956. NBC disappeared from the schedule in 1959 when WILX-TV signed on. Thus, at the start of the fall 1959 television season, WJIM-TV was broadcasting only CBS. On September 2, 1973, the Sunday Detroit Free Press published the first piece of an investigation by David Cay Johnston into news blackouts and manipulations ordered by Gross with follow-up reports continuing for three years. Two years later, The New York Times examined the case. The local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) challenged the station's license in 1973 alleging that Gross, whose company was by then renamed Gross Telecasting, Inc., prevented a number of prominent political figures from appearing on WJIM-TV. A Federal Communications Commission (FCC) judge ordered the license revoked in 1981. WJIM kept its license when the initial revocation was reversed by the FCC in 1982. The ACLU would eventually agree to a cash settlement in 1984. WLNS The stress of the decade-long licensing dispute led Gross to decide to leave the broadcasting business. He sold WJIM-TV to Backe Communications in 1984. The station, per FCC rules at the time (which prohibited TV and radio stations in the same market, but with different ownership, from sharing the same call letters)