WSIL-TV

Infobox_Broadcast
call_letters = WSIL-TV / KPOB-TV
city =
station_
station_slogan = The Southern Illinois News Leader
station_branding = WSIL-TV 3
analog =
WSIL: 3 (VHF)
KPOB: 15 (UHF)
digital =
WSIL: 34 (UHF)
KPOB: 18 (UHF)
other_chs =
affiliations = ABC
network =
founded =
airdate = WSIL: December 1953
KPOB: September 15, 1967
location = WSIL: Harrisburg, Illinois
KPOB: Poplar Bluff, Missouri
callsign_meaning = WSIL:
Southern ILlinois
KPOB:
POplar Bluff
former_callsigns =
former_channel_numbers = WSIL: 22 (1953-1959)
KPOB: none
owner = Melvin C. Wheeler, LLC
licensee = WSIL-TV, Inc.
sister_stations =
former_affiliations =
effective_radiated_power = WSIL:
100 kW (analog)
1000 kW (digital)
KPOB:
776 kW (analog)
50 kW (digital)
HAAT = WSIL:
629 m (analog)
301.8 m (digital)
KPOB: 184 m (both)
class =
facility_id = WSIL: 73999
KPOB: 73998
coordinates = WSIL:
coord|37|36|46.3|N|88|52|20.3|W|type:landmark_scale:2000
KPOB:
coord|36|48|3.7|N|90|27|6|W|type:landmark_scale:2000|name=KPOB-TV
homepage = [http://www.wsiltv.com/ www.wsiltv.com]

WSIL-TV is the ABC television affiliate for the Harrisburg, Illinois/Cape Girardeau, Missouri/Paducah, Kentucky television market, which covers all of the southern tip of the state of Illinois, parts of southeastern Missouri, and the "Purchase" region of western Kentucky. It is licensed to Harrisburg, with studios in nearby Carterville; the station operates on analog channel 3. It also operates a translator station, KPOB, channel 15, in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. Both stations are owned by Melvin C. Wheeler, LLC. WSIL's transmitter is located near Creal Springs, Illinois.

History

WSIL signed on the air for the first time on December 1, 1953. It originally broadcast on channel 22, but moved to channel 3 in March 1959, as did numerous stations originally assigned to UHF allocations before the Federal Communications Commission mandated that television-set manufacturers include UHF tuning capability in their products, in 1964. The original UHF transmitter had been built in Harrisburg before the three cities of Paducah, Harrisburg and Cape Girardeau had been collapsed into one large market. However, some parts of southeastern Missouri could not receive the channel 3 signal clearly, presumably because WSIL had to conform its signal to protect WREC-TV (now WREG-TV) in Memphis, Tennessee, the next market to the south. As a result, KPOB signed on September 15, 1967 to provide service to those counties, although Jonesboro, Arkansas' KAIT, another ABC station, may have been visible in much of the area.

For many years, WSIL/KPOB did not clear the weeknight broadcasts of ABC News, airing instead a children's show featuring cartoons and "Three Stooges" shorts in the 5:30-6:30 p.m. time slots. It was not until sometime in the late 1970s that the stations became the last ABC affiliates in the U.S. to abandon the practice of preempting the network news. However, in ABC's earlier years, quite a number of local stations did not carry the newscasts because their ratings trailed competitors CBS and NBC by a large margin; this changed when ABC initiated the "World News Tonight" (now "ABC World News") format in 1978, finally establishing the network as a significant news operation.

WSIL's newscasts tend to focus more on southern Illinois than the other stations in the area. In fact, the station does not even mention the market's other two main cities--Paducah and Cape Girardeau--in its on-air identifications, identifying as "Harrisburg/Marion/Carbondale."

External links

* [http://www.wsiltv.com/ WSIL-TV]
*TVQ|WSIL
*TVQ|KPOB
*BIA|WSIL|TV|TV
*BIA|KPOB|TV|TV