shows and classic movies. The station's original owners sold the station for $6.5 million to the Minneapolis Star & Tribune Company (which later became the Cowles Media Company) in 1977. By that year, the station expanded its broadcast day to 11:00 a.m., with the addition of a four-hour block of religious programs; by 1979, WDRB-TV began signing on daily at 7:00 a.m. In 1980, the station moved from Butchertown to its present location on Muhammad Ali Boulevard. However, WDRB-TV would eventually pull out of a contest for something it had sought since December 1977; a move from channel 41 to channel 21. In 1981, an administrative law judge had denied the application and preferred the competing bid from the Word Broadcasting Network, only for the FCC review board to overturn the decision. Cowles exited television in the early 1980s. After selling its only other station, KTVH in Hutchinson, Kansas, it sold WDRB to Block Communications of Toledo, Ohio for $10 million in 1983. Under Block, WDRB-TV dropped the channel 21 application, clearing the way for WBNA to launch. Block began to increase WDRB's profile in the market by acquiring higher-rated and more recent off-network sitcoms and dramas to its schedule, along with a focus on the broadcast rights for the burgeoning athletic programs of the University of Louisville's Cardinals, which the station won in 1985 and held for two years. As a Fox affiliate On October 9, 1986, WDRB-TV became an affiliate of the Fox network and became known as "Fox 41" in late 1989. WDRB-TV became one of two Fox affiliates serving the Louisville market in 1990, when Campbellsville-based WGRB (channel 34, later CW affiliate WBKI-TV) affiliated with the network. Channel 34 served the southern portions of the market before it moved its transmitter farther north to service more of the market; WDRB became the sole Fox station in Louisville when WGRB became affiliated with The WB in 1997. During the 1990s, WDRB shifted away from running older movies and classic sitcoms in favor of acquiring more talk and reality shows. In 1990, the station also regained rights to Louisville athletics in 1990 after the university spent three years with WHAS-TV and upgraded its transmitter, improving signal coverage. In 1994, Block Communications entered into a local marketing agreement to operate Salem, Indiana-based WFTE (channel 58, later WMYO, now WBKI); Block acquired WFTE outright in 2001, creating the first television