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 WIFR's studios and transmitter west of Rockford on North Meridian Road. | |
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| Channels | |
| Branding | WIFR |
| Programming | |
| Affiliations |
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| Ownership | |
| Owner |
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| WSLN | |
| History | |
| Founded | May 17, 2011 (2011-05-17) |
First air date | May 31, 2017 (8 years ago) (2017-05-31) |
Former call signs | W22EE-D (2011–2017)[a] |
Former channel number |
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| The CW Plus (23.5, 2021–2025) | |
Call sign meaning | Wisconsin, Illinois, Freeport, Rockford |
| Technical information[2] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 183744 |
| Class | LD |
| ERP | 15kW |
| HAAT | 215.8 m (708 ft) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 42°17′48.3″N89°10′15″W / 42.296750°N 89.17083°W /42.296750; -89.17083 |
| Links | |
Public license information | LMS |
| Website | www |
| Former license | |
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| City | Freeport, Illinois |
| Channels | |
| Programming | |
| Affiliations | CBS |
| Ownership | |
| Owner |
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| History | |
First air date | September 12, 1965 (1965-09-12) |
Last air date |
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Former call signs |
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Former channel numbers |
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| Technical information[3] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 4689 |
| ERP | 170 kW |
| HAAT | 219.7 m (721 ft) |
| Transmitter coordinates | 42°17′48″N89°10′15″W / 42.29667°N 89.17083°W /42.29667; -89.17083 |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
WIFR-LD (channel 23) is alow-power television station inRockford, Illinois, United States, affiliated withCBS. The station is owned byGray Media alongsideFreeport-licensedCW affiliateWSLN (channel 19). The two stations maintains studios and transmitter facilities on North Meridian Road in Rockford.
Until 2017, WIFR operated as a full-power television station licensed to nearby Freeport. Under its current low-power license, WIFR-LD continues to use channel 23 as itsvirtual channel. WIFR is the only television station in the Rockford market to retain the same network affiliation since it first signed on.
Since WIFR's over-the-air coverage area is effectively limited to Rockford itself and close-in suburbs inWinnebago County, it relies mostly on cable and satellite for its viewership. Its primary CBS channel is simulcast on a subchannel ofNBC affiliateWREX (VHF channel 13.6, mapped to virtual channel 23.10).
The station went on the air as WCEE-TV on September 12, 1965. It was the third station in the Rockford market, and was originally locally owned byRock River Television Corporation. The area's previous CBS affiliate, WREX-TV, switched toABC full-time, sending CBS to WCEE-TV, whose calls and branding were inspired by the CBS Eyemark logo. It has been with CBS ever since, and is the only station in the market to have never switched affiliations. The call letters were changed to the present WIFR on June 1, 1977. General Media sold the station to Worrell Newspapers ofCharlottesville, Virginia, in September of that year. Worrell sold all three stations WIFR,WHSV-TV inHarrisonburg, Virginia, and now-defunctWBNB-TV in theU.S. Virgin Islands toBenedek Broadcasting in 1986. When Benedek wentbankrupt in 2002, WIFR and WHSV were acquired by current owner Gray Television.
On the morning of July 5, 2003, a severe wind storm swept through Rockford. WIFR's transmitter tower, located behind the studio and office building on North Meridian Road in Rockford, collapsed, with various sections of the tower falling harmlessly onto a field behind the studio facility and causing no damage to the building, nor any injuries. Four months later, a new tower was erected and WIFR's signal was restored to full power. The concrete guy footings of the former tower around the property have not been removed and remainin situ as removing them would be impractical and superfluous.
Gray Television sold WIFR's spectrum in theFederal Communications Commission (FCC)'sincentive auction for $50,060,965; at the time, the station indicated that it planned to enter into a post-auction channel sharing agreement.[4] On April 21, 2017, Gray requestedspecial temporary authority to move the license of W22EE-D (channel 22), a low-power station it owns in Rockford, to channel 41 with the intent of using it to maintain CBS service in the market; in its request, Gray disclosed that the full-power WIFR license would be surrendered on May 31, 2017, though WIFR's existing transmitter would be still be used, but with its power restricted to meet the transmitting requirements for W22EE-D.[5][6] The full-power license was cancelled on that date.[7] Gray had acquired W22EE-D fromDTV America in an eight-station deal in 2016; it had never commenced any previous on-air operations since the call letters were issued on May 17, 2011, nor constructed any facilities.[1]
On November 18, 2019, WIFR-LD attempted a transfer to its post-reallocation channel 28 from a temporary lower-power antenna lower on their transmitter tower, but moved back to 41 in a matter of days with the permission ofT-Mobile, which would eventually hold that spectrum. This is due to channel 28 also being allocated to the northeast inMilwaukee to full-power ABC affiliateWISN-TV and causing cross-channel interference in portions ofBoone andMcHenry counties. The station again transitioned to channel 28 permanently on January 15, 2020, this time arranging withWeigel Broadcasting to simulcast 23.1 over their low-power station in the market,WFBN-LD (channel 35) as subchannel 23.11 to address those over-the-air viewers experiencing interference from WISN-TV. Gray's transition of WIFR-LD's regular higher-power signal at the former position of the channel 41 antenna was delayed several months from spring 2020 due to theCOVID-19 pandemic causing a lack of tower maintenance crews across the United States.[8]
Through all of this, on-air operations continued mostly unchanged, though viewers were asked to rescan their sets to continue watching the station. In practice, few viewers lost access to CBS programming due to the high penetration of cable and satellite, along with streaming options, including the station's livestream on CBS All Access/Paramount+.
On February 1, 2021, Gray Television announced it had acquiredQuincy Media, owner ofNBC affiliateWREX, for $925 million in a cash transaction.FCC rules governing televisionduopolies permit the common ownership of a full-power station and a low-power station in the same market.[9] Despite this, Gray elected to retain WIFR and sell WREX to Allen Media Broadcasting, a subsidiary of Los Angeles basedEntertainment Studios, on April 29, in a $380 million transaction that included several of WREX's Quincy Media sister stations in overlapping markets, includingWKOW/Madison,WAOW/Wausau,WXOW/La Crosse (and its semi-satelliteWQOW/Eau Claire),KWWL/Waterloo–Cedar Rapids, andWSIL-TV/Carbondale (and its satellite KPOB-TV/Poplar Bluff).[10] While Gray will not have any direct ownership or control of WREX, it hammered out a 10-year agreement with Allen Media which called for WREX to carry WIFR-LD's main channel on a WREX subchannel, which provides WIFR full-market coverage over-the-air.[11]
The station's signal ismultiplexed:
| Channel | Res. | Aspect | Short name | Programming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23.1 | 1080i | 16:9 | WIFR | CBS |
| 23.2 | 480i | Antenna | Antenna TV | |
| 23.3 | WIFROUT | Outlaw | ||
| 23.4 | ION | Ion Television | ||
| 23.6 | IONPLUS | Ion Plus | ||
| 23.7 | DEFY | Defy |
As noted in the last section, channel 23.11 is the fourth subchannel ofWeigel Broadcasting's WFBN-LD (channel 35), which uses physical channel 23 post-spectrum.
WIFR addedTribune Broadcasting'sAntenna TV as their second subchannel on December 17, 2012, replacingLocal AccuWeather (known on-air as "23 WeatherNow"). The subchannel carries live local and regional sports, includingRockford IceHogs hockey. Until the 2020 move of all market sports rights to cable viaNBC Sports Chicago andMarquee Sports Network, it carried the regional telecasts fromWGN Sports of selectedChicago Bulls,Cubs, andWhite Sox games. On May 28, 2015, its third subchannel launched, taking an affiliation with theJustice Network on July 27; in the interim it carried that year'sRockford Public School District 205 graduation and overflow games unable to be aired on 23.2. 23.3 would carry White Sox games, with 23.2 carrying all Cubs games. During September 2017, WIFR announced via commercials running on the main signal that the subchannel would change affiliation toCozi TV that month. 23.5 began carryingStateline CW after it moved from WREX-DT2 in 2021; this would become expanded to a full-power signal on new station WSLN-TV on channel 19 upon its sign-on in 2023, though the station continues to carry the 23.5 simulcast and the two stations are frequently co-branded in local promotional materials, most notably the WIFR website.
The Bulls and White Sox, alongside theChicago Blackhawks (the team the IceHogs had been the minor league affiliate of since their American Hockey League promotion in 2007), would make ade facto return to the station in 2024, when their newChicago Sports Network announced it would add an over-the-air affiliate in Rockford on the WSLN 19.3 subchannel, with 19.4 also carrying the network to accommodate potential overflow in a manner similar to how the WIFR subchannels had previously. On June 6, 2025, followingComcast's carriage agreement with CHSN, the network left the station.[13]
WIFR shut down its analog signal, overUHF channel 23, at noon on February 17, 2009, the original target date on which full-power television stations in the United States were totransition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate (which was later pushed back to June 12, 2009). The station's digital signal remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 41, usingvirtual channel 23.[14][15]
Broadcast television stations by affiliation in the state ofIllinois | ||
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Includes stations in out-of-state TV markets, but reaching a portion of Illinois | ||
| ABC | ||
| CBS | ||
| Fox | ||
| NBC | ||
| The CW | ||
| MyNetworkTV | ||
| Ion Television | ||
| PBS | ||
| Religious | ||
| Spanish | ||
| Other | ||
| ATSC 3.0 | ||
