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WSIL-TV (channel 3) and KPOB-TV (channel 15) are
television station A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the earth's s ...
s licensed respectively to
Harrisburg, Illinois Harrisburg () is a city in and the county seat of Saline County, Illinois, United States. It is located about southwest of Evansville, Indiana, and southeast of St. Louis, Missouri. Its 2020 population was 8,219, and the surrounding Harris ...
, and
Poplar Bluff, Missouri Poplar Bluff is a city in Butler County, Missouri, Butler County in southeastern Missouri, United States. It is the county seat of Butler County and is known as "The Gateway to the Ozarks" among other names. The population was 16,225 at the 2020 ...
, United States, serving as the ABC affiliates for
Southern Illinois Southern Illinois is a region of the U.S. state of Illinois comprising the southern third of the state, principally south of Interstate 70. Part of downstate Illinois, it is bordered by the two List of U.S. rivers by discharge, most voluminous ri ...
, Southeast
Missouri Missouri (''see #Etymology and pronunciation, pronunciation'') is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it border ...
, the
Purchase Purchasing is the procurement process a business or organization uses to acquire goods or services to accomplish its goals. Although there are several organizations that attempt to set standards in the purchasing process, processes can vary g ...
area of Western Kentucky, and Northwest Tennessee. Owned by
Allen Media Group Allen Media Group, alternately known by its former name of Entertainment Studios, Inc. is an American media and entertainment company based in Los Angeles. Owned and founded in 1993 by businessman Byron Allen, the company was initially involved ...
, the stations maintain studio facilities on Country Aire Drive (near the IL 13–Wolf Creek Road interchange) in
Carterville, Illinois Carterville is a city in Williamson County, Illinois, United States. At the 2020 census, the city's population was 5,848. The city is part of the Carbondale-Marion-Herrin combined statistical area and has grown considerably as a residential co ...
. WSIL-TV's transmitter is located near Creal Springs, Illinois, while KPOB's tower is on
US 60 U.S. Route 60 is a major east–west United States highway, traveling from southwestern Arizona to the Atlantic Ocean coast in Virginia. The highway's eastern terminus is in Virginia Beach, Virginia, where it is known as General Booth Bouleva ...
northwest of Poplar Bluff. KPOB-TV serves as a full-time satellite of WSIL-TV, covering the
Missouri Bootheel The Missouri Bootheel is a Salient (geography), salient (protrusion) located in the southeasternmost part of the U.S. state of Missouri, extending south of 36°30′ north latitude, so called because its shape in relation to the rest of the sta ...
and northeastern
Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the West South Central region of the Southern United States. It borders Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, Texas to the southwest, and Oklahoma ...
. WSIL-TV also operates
translator Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''trans ...
K10KM-D (channel 10) in
Cape Girardeau, Missouri Cape Girardeau ( , ; colloquially referred to as "Cape") is a city in Cape Girardeau County, Missouri, Cape Girardeau and Scott County, Missouri, Scott Counties in the U.S. state of Missouri. At the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the ...
. WSIL-TV was the first television station in southern Illinois, debuting on
ultra high frequency Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter ...
(UHF) channel 22 on December 6, 1953. It soon affiliated with ABC and
NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It is one of NBCUniversal's ...
before moving to channel 3 in 1959 and becoming a sole ABC affiliate. KPOB-TV went on the air in 1961; aside from a brief period in the 1980s, it has simulcast WSIL with separate legal identifications for the better part of its history. The station has focused its news coverage almost exclusively on Southern Illinois since the 1980s, since its broadcast coverage area is not as large as those of the other major stations in the market. It has traditionally fallen behind its two rivals in the market in news ratings and resources, though less so now than in decades past. After having two ownership groups almost all of its first 65 years on air, it was sold first to
Quincy Media Quincy Media, Inc., formerly known as Quincy Newspapers, Inc., was a family-owned media company that originated in the newspapers of Quincy, Illinois. The company's history can be traced back to 1835, when the ''Bounty Land Register'' was one of ...
in 2018 and to Allen in 2021.


History


Construction on channel 22

When the
Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, internet, wi-fi, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains j ...
(FCC) lifted its four-year freeze on new television station allocations in 1952, channel 22 in the then-new
ultra high frequency Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter ...
(UHF) band was assigned to Harrisburg. The Turner-Farrar Association, whose partners owned movie theaters in Southern Illinois, applied for the channel on June 23, 1952, and received a
construction permit Planning permission or building permit refers to the approval needed for construction or expansion (including significant renovation), and sometimes for demolition, in some jurisdictions. House building permits, for example, are subject to bu ...
on March 11, 1953. With the permit in hand, Turner-Farrar began construction on the station's studio facility in what was known as the Lockwood building on Poplar Street in Harrisburg, absorbing a former billiards hall in the process. A tower was erected on the site for the transmission facility. The station began broadcasting a test pattern on December 3, 1953. Two days later, an open house was held at the studios, and regular programming from Southern Illinois's first TV station began on December 6. The station had no network affiliation in its early months, but it added ABC in March 1954, followed by
NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast. It is one of NBCUniversal's ...
in December 1955.


Move to channel 3; construction of KPOB

Soon after starting WSIL-TV on channel 22, Turner-Farrar petitioned for the FCC to assign a channel in the more widely available VHF band. In its first attempt, denied in July 1956, the company attempted to have channel 13 relocated to Harrisburg from
Bowling Green, Kentucky Bowling Green is a city in Warren County, Kentucky, United States, and its county seat. Its population was 72,294 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of cities in Kentucky, third-most populous city in the stat ...
. The next month, Turner-Farrar applied to have channel 22 changed to channel 3. This proposal, along with the addition of educational channel 8 to Carbondale, was approved by the FCC in March 1958; in doing so, the commission rejected a competing proposal to allocate channel 3 to Carbondale. Construction of the channel 3 facility was completed in early March 1959, and on March 4, WSIL-TV signed on channel 3 from a new transmitter in Creal Springs, increasing its coverage area; the original tower at Harrisburg remained in place and was utilized for communications purposes. Coinciding with the move to VHF, WSIL-TV became ABC's 87th primary affiliate. In May 1960, the Turner–Farrar Association applied to the FCC to build UHF channel 15 in Poplar Bluff to serve southeast Missouri. The transmitter was completed in August 1961, and KPOB-TV began broadcasting programs on September 1 of that year. KPOB-TV was off the air on several occasions in its first 15 years: for over a month in June and July 1962 (due to lack of network signal), from September 1966 to October 1967 for renovations, and for more than a month in 1974 for construction. The last of these outages, from April 1976 to January 1977, was for financial reasons. During this time, WSIL attempted to sell KPOB-TV to the Hernreich Group, which would have switched it to rebroadcasting
KAIT KAIT (channel 8) is a television station in Jonesboro, Arkansas, United States, affiliated with ABC, NBC, and The CW Plus. It is owned by Gray Media alongside Telemundo affiliate KJTB-LD (channel 36) and KJBW-LD (channel 35). The three stat ...
in
Jonesboro, Arkansas Jonesboro () is a city located on Crowley's Ridge in the northeastern corner of the U.S. State of Arkansas. Jonesboro is one of two county seats of Craighead County, Arkansas, Craighead County. In 2023, the city had an estimated population of ...
, but negotiations proved unfruitful. In the early 1980s, KPOB briefly broadcast some local programming of its own.


New ownership in the 1980s

Turner-Farrar continued in the television business until 1980, when it announced it would sell WSIL-TV and KPOB in what amounted to a partial trade. As part of the transaction, one of the owners, O. L. Turner, acquired radio stations WEBQ and WEBQ-FM in Harrisburg from Macauley "Mackie" Nicholes, the radio voice of Southern Illinois Salukis men's basketball, who became one of several stockholders in the new ownership of the television stations. FCC approval was granted in May 1981, allowing the $3 million (equivalent to $ in ) TV station transaction and $700,000 (equivalent to $ in ) radio station sale to go forward. Nicholes, who together with cable television system operator John Kirby owned 92 percent of WSIL's stock, faced a monumental task in trying to improve WSIL-TV. A feature in '' The Southern Illinoisan'' noted that under Turner-Farrar's stewardship, channel 3 had equipment dating back to the 1950s and operated on a very low budget. It had a local reputation, per the newspaper, as "a station that illustrates a flood by showing its audience a hand-drawn picture of a lake in the corner of the screen, rather than sending a film crew to the scene". When Nicholes and Kirby took over, they inherited a station which had 30 total employees, including five news staffers; its principal competitors in the region—NBC affiliate
WPSD-TV WPSD-TV (channel 6) is a television station licensed to Paducah, Kentucky, United States, serving as the NBC affiliate for Western Kentucky's Jackson Purchase region, Southern Illinois, the Missouri Bootheel, and northwest Tennessee. Own ...
in
Paducah, Kentucky Paducah ( ) is a List of cities in Kentucky, home rule-class city in the Upland South, and the county seat of McCracken County, Kentucky, United States. The most populous city in the Jackson Purchase region, it is located in the Southeastern Unit ...
, and
CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS (an abbreviation of its original name, Columbia Broadcasting System), is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainme ...
affiliate
KFVS-TV KFVS-TV (channel 12) is a television station licensed to Cape Girardeau, Missouri, United States, serving Southeastern Missouri, the Jackson Purchase, Purchase area of Western Kentucky, Southern Illinois, and West Tennessee, Northwest Tennessee ...
in
Cape Girardeau, Missouri Cape Girardeau ( , ; colloquially referred to as "Cape") is a city in Cape Girardeau County, Missouri, Cape Girardeau and Scott County, Missouri, Scott Counties in the U.S. state of Missouri. At the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the ...
—each had more than 20 people in their news departments and employed over 90 people total. WSIL's newscasts attracted five percent of the audience compared to 38 and 42 percent for the other stations, respectively. Further, channel 3's tower in Creal Springs was much shorter than the structures of its rivals, limiting WSIL's reach. While it covered the Illinois portion of the market, it had inferior coverage in the Kentucky and Missouri portions, and FCC-imposed restrictions on the channel 3 allotment prevented it from obtaining signal parity with KFVS and WPSD. With this in mind, Nicholes decided to focus channel 3's news department almost exclusively on Southern Illinois. While he conceded the signal limitations would consign WSIL to third place in the market, he said he was determined to contend in Southern Illinois. In 1981, for the first fall season under the new owners, the station revamped its evening lineup; it ceased the practice of tape-delaying '' World News Tonight''. The station moved its cartoon program, ''Uncle Briggs and the Funny Company'', from early evenings to early mornings; the show, which traced its origins back to the station's first day on air in 1953 as a hosted Western movie with a local "Cactus Pete", was canceled in April 1982 as part of an effort to professionalize the station. Uncle Briggs, real name Briggs Gordon, continued with WEBQ radio until his death in 1988. Nicholes sold his stake in WSIL-TV to Kirby in December 1982. Months later, Kirby agreed to sell the station to Mel Wheeler, Inc., a Texas-based radio station owner, for $6.6 million (equivalent to $ in ). The transmitter facility was revamped in 1984, including a height extension to the tower. The station also relocated from its increasingly outmoded and cramped Harrisburg studio. In 1983, Wheeler had purchased a tract of land in Crainville, Illinois, a site which would be more centrally located to Marion and Carbondale for news coverage and advertising sales, but did not make the move; however, serious consideration to leaving Harrisburg for Crainville recurred in 1987. Construction began on the new facility in September 1988. Under Mel Wheeler, Inc., WSIL-TV became a family affair. Steve Wheeler, Mel's son, had become the operations manager and general manager by 1986; his wife, Bonnie, served as the news director. Under Wheeler, WSIL-TV continued to focus its news department exclusively on Southern Illinois news. Ratings improved but remained behind the competition; at 10 p.m., when all three local stations aired news, WSIL captured 12 percent of the audience compared to 51 percent watching KFVS and 35 percent viewing WPSD. Despite equipment improvements—such as the launch of a digital signal in 2002, a refresh of the news set and imaging in 2004, and the introduction of high-definition local news in 2010—as well as the launch of a morning newscast in 2004, WSIL continued to remain off the pace of KFVS and WPSD; it was third in revenue (using 2013 data) and ratings (as of 2014). The station was one of 57 ABC affiliates that refused to air ''
NYPD Blue ''NYPD Blue'' is an American police procedural television series set in New York City, exploring the struggles of the fictional 15th Precinct detective squad in Manhattan. Each episode typically intertwines several plots involving an ensemble ca ...
'' during its first season in 1993–1994 due to objections over its content; the show aired in the market on
Fox Foxes are small-to-medium-sized omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull; upright, triangular ears; a pointed, slightly upturned snout; and a long, bushy tail ("brush"). Twelve species ...
affiliate
KBSI KBSI (channel 23) is a television station licensed to Cape Girardeau, Missouri, United States, serving as the Fox affiliate for Southeastern Missouri, the Purchase area of Western Kentucky, Southern Illinois, and Northwest Tennessee. It is ...
. Steve Wheeler appeared on ''
Good Morning America ''Good Morning America'', often abbreviated as ''GMA'', is an American breakfast television, morning television program that is broadcast on American Broadcasting Company, ABC. It debuted on November 3, 1975, and first expanded to weekends wit ...
'' to explain his decision; he announced during the interview that if the program was successful, WSIL would reconsider. Citing his feeling that the show's content had been toned down since its pilot episode, Wheeler approved the program for air on WSIL-TV beginning in September 1994.


Quincy and Allen ownership

On October 31, 2018,
Quincy Media Quincy Media, Inc., formerly known as Quincy Newspapers, Inc., was a family-owned media company that originated in the newspapers of Quincy, Illinois. The company's history can be traced back to 1835, when the ''Bounty Land Register'' was one of ...
announced that it would acquire WSIL-TV and KPOB-TV for $24.5 million (equivalent to $ in ). The sale was approved by the FCC on December 20 and completed on January 15, 2019. Two years later, on February 1, 2021,
Gray Television Gray Media, Inc., doing business as Gray Television, is an American publicly traded television broadcasting company based in Atlanta. Founded in 1946 by James Harrison Gray as Gray Communications Systems, the company owns or operates 180 statio ...
announced the purchase of Quincy Media for $925 million (equivalent to $ in ). As Gray already owned KFVS-TV, also within the top four stations in ratings in the Paducah–Cape Girardeau–Harrisburg market, it opted to keep that station and sell WSIL–KPOB in order to satisfy FCC requirements. On April 29, 2021, it was announced that Allen Media Broadcasting would acquire WSIL, KPOB, and the remaining Quincy stations not being acquired by Gray Television for $380 million (equivalent to $ in ). The sale was completed on August 2. On January 17, 2025, Allen Media Group announced plans to cut local meteorologist/weather forecaster positions from its stations, including WSIL, and replacing them with a "weather hub" produced by
The Weather Channel The Weather Channel (TWC) is an American pay television television channel, channel owned by Weather Group, LLC, a subsidiary of Allen Media Group. The channel's headquarters are located in Atlanta, Georgia. Launched on May 2, 1982, the channel ...
, which AMG also owns. The decision was reversed within a week by management in response to "viewer and advertiser reaction". On June 1, 2025, amid financial woes and rising debt, Allen Media Group announced that it would explore "strategic options" for the company, such as a sale of its television stations (including WSIL/KPOB).


Notable former on-air staff

* Tony Laubach – meteorologist


Technical information


Subchannels

The stations' signals are
multiplexed In telecommunications and computer networking, multiplexing (sometimes contracted to muxing) is a method by which multiple analog or digital signals are combined into one signal over a shared medium. The aim is to share a scarce resource— ...
:


Analog-to-digital conversion

WSIL-TV ended regular programming on its analog signal, over VHF channel 3, on June 12, 2009, the official date on which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition
UHF Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter ...
channel 34, using
virtual channel In most telecommunications organizations, a virtual channel is a method of remapping the ''program number'' as used in H.222 Program Association Tables and Program Mapping Tables to a channel number that can be entered as digits on a receiver's ...
3. As part of the SAFER Act, WSIL kept its analog signal on the air until June 26 to inform viewers of the digital television transition through a loop of
public service announcement A public service announcement (PSA) is a message in the public interest disseminated by the media without charge to raise public awareness and change behavior. Oftentimes these messages feature unsettling imagery, ideas or behaviors that are des ...
s from the
National Association of Broadcasters The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) is a Industry trade group, trade association and lobbying, lobby group representing the interests of commercial and non-commercial over-the-air radio and television broadcasting, broadcasters in th ...
. KPOB-TV shut down its analog signal, over UHF channel 15, on June 12, 2009; the station's digital signal relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 18 to channel 15.


References


External links


WSIL-TV/KPOB-TV
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wsil-Tv 1953 establishments in Illinois American Broadcasting Company affiliates Court TV affiliates Allen Media Group Heroes & Icons affiliates Ion Television affiliates Television channels and stations established in 1953 Television stations in the Paducah–Cape Girardeau–Harrisburg market True Crime Network affiliates