WDRB had previously been carried on many cable systems in areas adjacent to the Louisville market, including Kentucky's capital city, Frankfort. The channel was the first one sequentially on Frankfort's channel lineup (on channel 2), and was the sole source for Fox programming in HD in the capital city until 2012. On January 1, 2012, WDRB was removed from most cable systems outside of the market as a result of a corporate directive from Fox as part of its new affiliation agreement that forbade WDRB from being distributed on providers outside of its home market to protect ratings for the network's affiliates in nearby markets; this rule has been a source of conflict in several other markets, which have had out-of-market Fox affiliates from adjacent areas pulled from local cable providers. A few months later, the station removed the county outlines of Anderson and Franklin counties in Kentucky (the westernmost counties in the Lexington television market) and Switzerland County in Indiana (within the Cincinnati television market) from weather maps and severe weather alert displays; as a result, WDRB became the only Louisville area station that did not recognize Frankfort as being part of its viewing area. Despite this, Frankfort and Lawrenceburg are still occasionally mentioned during on-air weather segments. On December 20, 2017, the main cable provider in Frankfort, the Frankfort Plant Board, announced WDRB's return to their channel lineup, mainly for local news coverage, in 2018. Beginning sometime in April, WDRB returned on channels 4 and 504 in HD providing local news and syndicated programming while replacing Fox network programming with a cropped simulcast of Antenna TV from WDRB-DT2. At the same time, FPB began carrying the Antenna TV feed from WDRB-DT2 outright on channel 28, replacing the feed from WLJC-DT3 which had, in turn, replaced WTVQ-DT6 in early 2018 when Lexington's Antenna TV affiliation moved. WDRB was removed once again on January 1, 2021 after FPB and WDRB were unable to come to an agreement to continue carriage of the station, though this disagreement was based on financial differences rather than a network rule.