This article is not to be confused with real life WGNT, the CW affiliate in Norfolk, VA.
WGNT (Channel 55) is an Independent station licensed to Buffalo, New York and serving the surrounding area. It airs a general entertainment schedule. WGNT is also the official station of the Buffalo Bills, airing many programs related to the team including preseason games.
WGNT is best known for its years of ownership under eccentric Pentecostal Swedish-American former McDonalds franchisee Patrick Johansen (1946-1998), who would become a local celebrity due to his entertaining personality and how he expressed his hardline conservative beliefs through long, entertaining rants that would devolve into nonsense.
History[]
Channel 55 in Buffalo previously belonged to independent station WINF, who signed on in October 1958 and shut down July 1959. Little is known about the station, although their former studios were left abandoned, and until it was demolished in 2017 it was a popular urban exploration spot.
WFBF and Patrick Johansen ownership[]
WFBF signed on at 12 PM on August 5th, 1986, as an independent station. It's callsigns stood for "Fox Buffalo", for an unrealized Fox affiliation. It was originally owned by businessman Patrick Johansen, who had immigrated from Sweden in 1958 as a young 12-year-old boy. The station was unique as it would air some Swedish programming in the overnight hours used as filler. It also aired children's cartoons, mostly from the 60s and 70s. One cartoon showed on WFBF was Moomin.
The station went through an overhaul in 1988 as Patrick Johansen, formerly a member of the Church of Sweden, flipped to become an Evangelical Christian after attending a Jimmy Swaggart event. WFBF dropped most secular programming, changed its callsign to the present day WGNT and suddenly fired most of its staff. Johansen became Pentecostal in 1990 and the programming on the station changed as such. He would also start to produce his own local programming in the primetime hours called "WGNT Revelations". These would usually consist of Johansen sitting in a big chair by a fireplace in his own house and talking about a variety of topics, ranging from childhood stories from Sweden to his experiences with God to what he ate for lunch. Sometimes, he would eat dinner on camera, and review it. He would also have the station phone lines open to answer questions any viewer had. However, a good amount of these calls was from prank callers attempting to rile Johansen up. In one notorious instance, a prank caller asked him if he knew "these nuts". He would go on a 30-minute diatribe telling the prank caller to "shove the telephone receiver up your butt".
WGNT's logo as a WB affiliate, designed by Patrick Johansen himself
WGNT became a charter member of The WB when the channel first launched on January 11th, 1995. However, the slate of programs was to the chagrin of Johansen, who pre-empted shows like Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer with his own produced programming. He expressed this very clearly in his sermons, calling The WB "satanic propaganda". This drew the ire of The WB, who was frustrated that they affiliated with a station owned by a self-described "Fundamentalist Pentecostal Swedish Christian" who would prefer to air low-budget and low-quality self-produced shows instead of station programming. The WB would desperately attempt to affiliate themselves with any other station for the next 3 years until they found one in the then-under construction WTWN, disaffiliating with them on New Year's Eve 1998. However, Johansen would never see this, as he passed away at the age of 52 of a fatal heart attack that he refused medical treatment for on December 17th. Johansen had developed a small fanbase of curious viewers during his time owning WGNT, with a few books and a documentary later produced by the station itself describing his life as "an entertainer".
On New Year's Day 1999, WGNT became an affiliate of the American Independent Network, or AIN. During this time, they were owned by Johansen's high school friend David Silver. He would sell the station to TBN later that year, who then sold it again a few months later to Grand Island Broadcasting Inc. (GIB).
Technical Information[]
The station's digital signal is multiplexed:
| Channel | Video | Aspect | Short Name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 55.1 | 1080i | 16:9 | WGNT | Main WGNT programming |
| 55.2 | 480i | NHK WORLD | NHK World Japan | |
| 55.3 | OLDCNTRY | The Old Country | ||
| 55.4 | BEIN | beIN Sports Xtra |
Analog Sign-off[]
WGNT received the digital companion channel of 40
| BIG Media | |
|---|---|
 affiliate | |
 affiliates | |
| Independent stations | |
 affiliate | |
 affiliate | |
| Other stations | WTDK (NHK World) | KIKU (tourist info) |
| Notes: 1 means BIG Media owns them while Nittany Media operates them  | |
| TV stations in Western New York, including Buffalo and Niagara Falls | |
|---|---|
| TV stations in the Greater Toronto Area | |
|---|---|
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