The station lost its MyNetworkTV affiliation on October 31, 2008, due to both dissatisfaction by the network and viewer complaints about the loss of "WWE Friday Night Smackdown" from WKYT-DT2 after its move to MyNetworkTV; unlike that CW affiliate, WBLU-LP was never carried on any local pay television services, nor had Equity communicated in any way with local providers to add the station (this was despite most of Equity's stations, including WBLU-LP, being freely available through C-band satellite, negating any need to depend on WBLU-LP's transmitter for a quality signal). Communication between local media, MyNetworkTV and Equity (which was infamous for having little to no presence of any local non-engineering staff for their stations, running almost all operations remotely from Little Rock) was non-existent to the point that the market's professional wrestling fans placed paid advertising in the "Lexington Herald-Leader" expressing their frustration, forcing the hand of MyNetworkTV to affiliate on a station viewable both over-the-air and on cable in a critical WWE market. "Smackdown" then moved immediately to the second subchannel of WTVQ-TV, replacing an automated weather information stream, with the subchannel becoming a full-time network affiliate on New Year's Day 2009.