About WOOD TV8

The station went on the air as WLAV-TV on August 15, 1949, first airing on VHF channel 7; it was Michigan's fourth television station and the first situated outside of Detroit. The station was founded by Grand Rapids industrialist Leonard Adrian Versluis, who also founded Grand Rapids' second radio station, WLAV, in 1940. (1340 AM, now WJRW). Versluis sold the television station for $1.37 million to Grandwood Broadcasting in 1951. The Bitner Group subsidiary also owned WOOD, Grand Rapids' first radio station.

Grandwood first sought for a television license in 1948, but the application just missed the Federal Communications Commission's block on new television building licenses. In reality, the WLAV-TV application was one of the final building permits given before the suspension. Grandwood ultimately got weary of waiting and agreed to acquire the station from Versluis. WLAV changed its call letters to WOOD-TV to mirror its radio sibling and began broadcasting from a new transmitter in northern Grand Rapids on October 19.