WICS - History

History

WICS began operations on September 17, 1953 and was owned by Plains Television Partners of Springfield, which was a 50/50 joint venture of Transcontinental Properties and the H & E Balaban Corporation. It carried programming from all four networks of the era (NBC, CBS, ABC, and DuMont). However, it was a primary NBC affiliate. Although the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had collapsed most of East Central Illinois into one giant television market, WICS took on a secondary CBS affiliation because its primary affiliate, WCIA in Champaign, only provided a marginal signal to Springfield. It also aired whatever ABC programs WTVP in Decatur (now WAND) had to turn down in order to air CBS shows not cleared by WCIA.

By 1958, WICS was an exclusive NBC affiliate. The station originally had facilities at the Leland Hotel on Capitol Street in Downtown Springfield. In 1964, it moved to its current studios on East Cook Street in East Springfield. The FCC considered making East Central Illinois an all-UHF market but dropped these plans under heavy lobbying from WCIA. However, WICS' signal was not nearly strong enough to reach the eastern portion of the area. At the time, UHF signals were not strong enough to cover large amounts of territory. Accordingly in 1959, Plains Television signed-on WCHU in Champaign as a low-powered satellite of WICS. In 1960, it bought WDAN-TV (another low-powered station in Danville) and changed the calls to WICD. At the same time, WCHU began breaking off from the WICS signal to air some local programming for the eastern side of the market, which was simulcasted on WICD. In 1967, Plains Television merged WCHU and WICD into a new full-power station on UHF channel 15 under the WICD calls, but operating under the WCHU license.

Plains Television sold WICS to Guy Gannett Communications (no relation to the larger Gannett company) in 1986 but held onto WICD until 1994. The two stations operated as a regional network sharing most network and syndicated programming. This arrangement nearly brought down WICD, and for a time, it appeared the station would revert back to a full-time satellite of WICS. Guy Gannett finally bought WICD in 1994. Sinclair purchased most of Guy Gannett's stations, including WICS and WICD, in 1999.

The company almost immediately turned around and announced it was selling the two (which count as one for regulatory purposes) plus KGAN in Cedar Rapids, Iowa to Sunrise Television. However, the FCC did not allow Sunrise to buy WICS/WICD due to Sunrise's ownership structure. Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst (HMTF), an investment firm controlled by then-Texas Rangers and Dallas Stars owner Tom Hicks, owned a large block of Sunrise stock. HMTF is majority stockholder of the LIN TV Corporation, then-owner of WAND. The FCC ruled HMTF held enough stock in Sunrise making an acquisition of WICS/WICD a duopoly between two of the four highest-rated stations in the market which is forbidden by FCC rules. As a result, Sinclair remains the owner of WICS/WICD and KGAN.

In 2005, the two stations swapped affiliations with WAND and became ABC affiliates as part of a larger national deal between LIN TV and NBC that also involved WDTN in Dayton, Ohio (who swapped affiliations with WICS/WICD's Dayton sister station WKEF the year before). WICS/WICD was to have switched to ABC at the beginning of the 2004–05 television season, but its affiliation agreement with NBC still had one year to go. On November 17, 2010, WICS became available to Dish Network customers in Terre Haute as the ABC affiliate since the market lacks an affiliate of its own. WICD's transmitter is near the border between Illinois and Indiana and WICD is carried on most cable systems on the Illinois side of the Terre Haute market. However, WICS is the only station up-linked by satellite providers due to contractual obligations. WICS will likely disappear from the Terre Haute local feed in the fall of 2011 when that city's Fox affiliate, WAWV-TV, rejoins ABC.