The G & E Religious and Educational Broadcasting Corporation obtained a construction permit for a new television station on channel 46 in South Bend on April 10, 1973. The allocation had previously been used by WNDU-TV, when that station signed on the air on July 15, 1955; WNDU moved to its present channel 16 in 1957. G & E, representing 618 churches, took the call letters WMSH-TV and broke ground on studio facilities on May 27. The transmitter site would be located separately from the studios due to potential interference to WSBT radio. Intended to begin on September 1, 1973, channel 46 instead began telecasting in late July or on August 3, 1974. Within less than a year of telecasting, financial problems developed at G & E. The station had a total of $2.5 million in debt against $1.8 million in assets. A court placed the company into receivership, after which 14 creditors sued to force channel 46 into bankruptcy. Three months later, two investors who held $18,000 in station-issued bonds sued G & E for selling securities without being registered with federal or state authorities, as well as omissions in statements made by the company; Secretary of StateLarry Conrad then charged G & E head George McQueen with criminal misrepresentation. Citing lack of funds, WMSH-TV went silent September 2, 1975. The bankruptcy case stretched into 1976 as several buyers expressed interest.
WHME-TV
In January 1977, rumors began to circulate that the Lester Sumrall Evangelistic Association was in negotiations to buy WMSH-TV from its trustee, Elkhart attorney Gordon MacKenzie. The rumors would be confirmed in March when the $496,000 sale was announced. Sumrall closed on the purchase on July 21, and the newly renamed WHME-TV signed on the air on September 10, 1977; the station ran mostly religious programs, along with a blend of classic cartoons, sitcoms from the 1950s, '60s and '70s, and some drama series. Cameras from the Sumrall stations in Indianapolis and Miami were brought to South Bend, as WMSH did not have any color cameras. By 1978, the station ran cartoons from 7 to 9 a.m. on weekdays. WHME ran Christian programs such as The PTL Club, The 700 Club, and locally produced Christian programs from 9 a.m. to about 1 p.m. Secular general entertainment programs ran from 1 to 7 p.m. Then after 7 p.m., WHME ran repeats of The PTL Club, The 700 Club and some of the religious shows that aired on Sundays, along with locally produced Christian programs. Saturdays consisted of Christian-themed children's programs until 9 a.m., a blend of secular cartoons and sitcoms until noon or 1 p.m., and some other family-friendly programs until 5 p.m. Christian programming continued after 6 p.m. Saturday nights and all day on Sundays. The station began broadcasting on a 24-hour schedule by 1980. In the early 1980s, WHME cut back its secular programming hours on weekdays to 2 to 7 p.m. By the early to mid-1980s, the morning cartoons returned and at that point it started running more recent children's programs on weekdays such as The Great Space Coaster, Scooby-Doo, Inspector Gadget, and by the early 1990s, The Disney Afternoon animation block. WHME-TV also aired the nationally syndicated evening news program, the Independent Network News. By the early 1990s, more sitcoms from the 1970s and 1980s were added onto the schedule. In September 1995, WHME began carrying the Kids' WBprogram block within its afternoon lineup, but unlike other LeSEA-owned stations, it declined to carry primetime programming from the block's parent network, The WB. In the early 2000s, WHME decreased the number of cartoons on its schedule and replaced them with more sitcoms and drama series. Today, WHME continues to run a blend of classic television series each afternoon on weekdays.
WHME-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 46, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 48, using PSIP to display the station's virtual channel as its former UHF analog channel 46. On March 8, 2011, WHME-TV received a construction permit to move its digital operations to its former analog allotment on channel 46, due to interference with WMLW-TV in Racine, Wisconsin, a station that also broadcasts its digital signal on UHF channel 48, with both stations having signal conflicts on the edges of their market areas. The conflict was resolved in January 2018 when WMLW cashed in their spectrum in the 2016 FCC auction and moved to a channel share with their sister low-power station, though WHME will move to channel 36 at some point in 2019 as a result of the spectrum repack. Between 2012 and sometime in early 2013, digital subchannel 46.3 was leased to , a family-oriented Spanish-language network. The subchannel previously carried no content besides a card listing the channel numbers, call letters and city of license, but added Light TV to its 46.3 subchannel.
Programming
Sports
WHME used to carry many regional college football and basketball games shown through ESPN Plus until the 2007 launch of the Big Ten Network. WHME currently serves as the South Bend home to Ball State University sports. WHME previously served as the South Bend affiliate of ESPN Regional Television's syndicated SEC Network until the August 2014 launch of the cable exclusive SEC Network. The station also maintains its own sports division that broadcasts many high school football and basketball games from Michiana area teams, usually once weekly, along with local NAIA college games, such as Bethel and Grace. WHME's sports director is Chuck Freeby, who previously worked as a sports anchor at WNDU-TV.
