WTVO - History

History

The station signed-on May 3, 1953 as the market's first television outlet and is the oldest continuously operating UHF station in the northern portion of Illinois. Originally airing an analog signal on UHF channel 39 but moved to channel 17 in 1967. Interestingly, WQRF has operated from channel 39 since first signed-on in November 1978. WTVO was originally a primary NBC affiliate and shared secondary ABC status with WREX-TV.

When WCEE-TV (now WIFR) signed-on in 1965, it took the CBS affiliation sending ABC to WREX and leaving WTVO with just NBC. The station was owned by Winnebago Television (incoporated into the call sign, Winnebago TeleVision Organization), which was partially owned by the H & E Balaban Corporation (which later became Balaban Stations), until 1986 when Young Broadcasting of New York State purchased it. After a 42-year run as the local NBC station, it swapped network affiliation with WREX taking the ABC affiliation in August 1995.

Another ownership change came on November 22, 2004 when Mission Broadcasting (a subsidiary of Texas-based Nexstar Broadcasting) bought WTVO from Young for $21 million. WTVO shares studios with Nexstar-owned WQRF although this station essentially functions as the senior partner of the agreement. WQRF originates from the WTVO facility and this station produces programming for the former. For a number of years, WTVO carried selected Chicago Cubs telecasts originating from WGN-TV. However, in 1988, those telecasts moved to WIFR. During its days as an NBC affiliate, WTVO preempted a good number of network shows particularly in weekday and Saturday daytime as well as the Saturday edition of the NBC Nightly News in the 1980s.

A significant figure in its history was news anchor Bruce Richardson. He spent over 35 years at the station from 1956 until his retirement in June 1992. Richardson had the longest reign as a local news anchor in the history of Rockford television. Harold Froelich, one of WTVO's founders, served as General Manager for 37 years from sign-on until his retirement in 1990. In 1953, Froelich was one of the youngest General Managers in television. WTVO's secondary programming service launched on September 22, 2003 with offerings from UPN. Known on-air as "Rockford UPN 16", WTVO-DT2 replaced WHPN (now WBUW) in Madison, Wisconsin on Rockford area cable systems.

Access to UPN was actually lost a year earlier in 2002 after a change in WHPN’s ownership prompted an affiliation switch to The WB. That station's new owner, Acme Communications, was a major station group involved in The WB. Since UPN moved to a similar secondary programming service in Madison (known "UPN 14"), Rockford cable systems imported Chicago's WPWR-TV into the market as the de facto UPN affiliate for Rockford until WTVO added "Rockford UPN 16". In September 2006 with the merge of UPN and The WB, WTVO-DT2 joined the other new network debuting at the time (MyNetworkTV) which is actually a sister operation to Fox that is seen on WQRF.

Loose guy wires on the antenna tower led to a precautionary evacuation of the WTVO / WQRF FOX 39 studios at approximately 5:35p on March 2, 2012. As a further precaution, the main power was also shut down.