Gillett began defaulting on some of his purchases in the late-1980s culminating in 1990 when he sold WEAU to Busse Broadcasting, owner of KOLN in Lincoln, Nebraska and KGIN in Grand Island, Nebraska (and at one point also owned WWMT in Kalamazoo, Michigan and KOKH-TV in Oklahoma City). In 1998, Gray Communications Systems (which was subsequently renamed Gray Television) and Cosmos Broadcasting (the broadcasting division of The Liberty Corporation which was later merged into Raycom Media and itself sold to Gray) teamed up to purchase the Busse stations with WEAU going to Cosmos and KOLN/KGIN going to Gray. Cosmos then traded WEAU back to Gray in exchange for WALB (Gray's original flagship station) in Albany, Georgia (that station returned to Gray in 2019 after WALB's last owner Raycom Media merged with Gray). Technology was the highlight of the following decade as WEAU-DT, which originally transmitted on channel 39, signed-on April 30, 2002 with the digital transmitter located at the top of the tower in Fairchild.