During the early days of WBTI, it signed on at 10:00 a.m. and operated as a general-entertainment independent station until 7 p.m. each day. At that time, the station's signal was scrambled as it carried programming from the ON TV service, which provided movies, sports, and live events to viewers through a paid subscription and a decoder to receive ON TV programs. (Buford, which had planned a multi-city expansion into subscription television and even a national network of translators through its Residential Entertainment subsidiary, licensed the ON TV name from Oak Communications in the Cincinnati market and also would build STV operations in Chicago and Minneapolis under the brand name Spectrum.) Eventually, WBTI expanded its broadcast day by signing on earlier; the station began carrying movies and cartoons until 10 a.m., when the Christian Broadcasting Network program "The 700 Club" aired until 11:30.