WENR-TV
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Chicago, Illinois United States |
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| Branding |
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| Slogan |
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| Channels |
Digital: 44 (UHF) (to move to 22 (UHF)) Virtual: 7 () |
| Subchannels | |
| Translators | 7 (VHF) Chicago (application) |
| Affiliations |
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| Owner |
Disney/ABC (WLS Television, Inc.) |
| First air date | September 17, 1948 |
| Call letters' meaning |
World's Largest Store (Derived from former station WLS radio) |
| Sister station(s) | WMVP |
| Former callsigns |
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| Former channel number(s) |
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| Transmitter power | 1000 kW 700 kW (CP) |
| Height | 518 m (1,699 ft) |
| Facility ID | 73226 |
| Transmitter coordinates | 41°52′44″N 87°38′8″W / 41.87889°N 87.63556°WCoordinates: 41°52′44″N 87°38′8″W / 41.87889°N 87.63556°W |
| Licensing authority | FCC |
| Public license information: |
Profile CDBS |
| Website | abc7chicago |
WLS-TV, virtual channel 7 (UHF digital channel 44), is an ABC owned-and-operated television station licensed to Chicago, Illinois, United States. The station is owned by the ABC Owned Television Stations subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. WLS-TV maintains studio facilities located on North State Street in the Chicago Loop, and its transmitter is located atop the Willis Tower on South Wacker Drive.
The station first signed on the air on September 17, 1948 as WENR-TV. It was the third television station to sign on in the Chicago market behind WGN-TV (channel 9), which debuted six months earlier in April, and WBKB (channel 4), which signed on in September 1946. As one of the original ABC-owned stations on channel 7, it was the second station to begin operations after New York City, and before Detroit, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
The station's original call letters were taken from co-owned radio station WENR (890 AM), which served as an affiliate of the ABC Radio Network (WENR would eventually merge with WLS, with which it shared a frequency under a time-sharing arrangement until ABC purchased a 50% interest in WLS in 1954).
In February 1953, ABC merged with United Paramount Theatres (UPT), the former theater division of Paramount Pictures. UPT subsidiary Balaban and Katz owned WBKB (which shared a CBS affiliation with WGN-TV). The newly merged American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres, as the company was known then, could not keep both stations because of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations then enforced that forbade the common ownership of two television stations licensed to the same market. As a result, WBKB's channel 4 license was sold to CBS, which subsequently changed that station's call letters to WBBM-TV; that outlet would move to VHF channel 2 several months later on July 5, 1953. The old WBKB's on-air and behind-the-scenes staff stayed at the new WBBM-TV, while the WBKB call letters and management moved to channel 7 (from 1965 to 1968, a "-TV" suffix was included in the station's calls, modifying it to WBKB-TV).
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Wikipedia