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.[2] It carried programming from all four networks of the era (NBC, CBS, ABC, and DuMont).[3] 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-power satellite of WICS. In 1960, it bought WDAN-TV (another low-power 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 simulcast 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 to a full-time satellite of WICS. Guy Gannett finally bought WICD in 1994.
Sinclair Broadcast Group 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 was majority stockholder of the LIN TV Corporation, then-owner of WAND. The FCC ruled HMTF held enough stock in Sunrise that if it bought WICS/WICD, it would have created a duopoly between two of the four highest-rated stations in the market, which is forbidden by FCC rules. With the eventual relaxation of ownership limits, Sinclair soon took the stations off the market and retained them.
On September 5, 2005, the two stations swapped affiliations with WAND and became ABC affiliates as part of a larger national deal between LIN 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 it was required to remain with NBC for another year, as its affiliation contract with the station did not expire until September 4 of the following year. On November 17, 2010, WICS became available to Dish Network customers in Terre Haute, Indiana, as the ABC affiliate since the market lacked an affiliate of its own. WICD's transmitter is near the border between Illinois and Indiana, and WICD was carried on most cable systems on the Illinois side of the Terre Haute market. However, WICS was the only station uplinked by satellite providers due to contractual obligations, since it was considered the main station. WICS disappeared from the Terre Haute local feed in the fall of 2011 after that city's Fox affiliate, WFXW, rejoined ABC as WAWV-TV.
On December 31, 2012, Sinclair closed on the purchase of the non-license assets of GOCOM's three television stations, WRSP/WCCU and sister station WBUI for approximately $25.6 million. Sinclair provides sales and other non-programming services to the stations pursuant to shared services and joint sales agreements. Both WRSP/WCCU and WBUI were initially operated from separate facilities from WICS/WICD. However, WCCU quickly moved its advertising sales operation from its location on South Neil Street/U.S. 45 in Champaign into WICD's studios. Eventually, WRSP and WBUI also moved from their offices on Old Rochester Road in Springfield and were consolidated into WICS' facility.
On March 11, 2025, it was reported that Sinclair (WICS Licensee, LLC) would sell five TV stations, including WICS and WICD, to Rincon Broadcasting Group, led by Todd Parkin.[4] The sale was approved by the FCC on July 1,[5] and completed on July 9.[6]
