WBUI
WBUI, channel 23, is a television station licensed to Decatur, Illinois, in the United States, serving Central Illinois as an affiliate of The CW. It is owned by GOCOM Media, LLC, through GOCOM Media of Illinois, LLC, alongside Springfield-licensed Fox affiliate WRSP-TV, channel 55, and its semi-satellite, Urbana-licensed WCCU, channel 27. It is operated by Community News Media, owner of Springfield-licensed ABC affiliate WICS, channel 20, and its semi-satellite, Champaign-licensed WICD, channel 15, continuing an operating relationship that began under Sinclair Broadcast Group. WBUI, WRSP and WICS share studios on East Cook Street in Springfield's Eastside. WBUI maintains an advertising sales office on East William Street in downtown Decatur and transmitter facilities in Whitmore Township, between Oreana and Interstate 72. The station began in 1984 as WFHL, a religious independent station, and has since been a Pax affiliate, a WB affiliate and, since September 2006, the Central Illinois affiliate of The CW. Its website is cw23tv.com, and it brands itself as CW 23.
Founding as WFHL in 1984
The station was founded on December 28, 1983, and first aired on May 14, 1984, according to the Broadcasting and Cable Yearbook; the Television and Cable Factbook gives May 13. It signed on as WFHL, broadcasting on analog UHF channel 23 from Decatur. Local media histories explain WFHL as a Christian television station whose call letters evoked faith, hope and love, and recall that it had operated as a cable channel before moving to UHF channel 23 in 1984. As a religious independent, the station combined church and ministry programmes with movies, cartoons and locally produced shows. One local production remembered in Decatur media histories is In Focus, a locally produced programme hosted by WFHL staff covering local issues, religion and station news, and another is Newsline, described as WFHL's local news show, which ran from 1984 to 1991 and was hosted by Paul Osborne for its whole run. The station also attempted local weather coverage on a small scale. That religious-independent format lasted fourteen years, until 1998, making WFHL one of the longer-lived examples of a locally owned religious station on a full-power UHF licence in a small American market.
Pax, WPXU and Secondary UPN
In 1998 the station's identity changed twice over. It was sold into the Pax network era and took the call sign WPXU on May 11, 1998, carrying Pax TV, the family-oriented network built by Paxson Communications, from 1998 to 1999. Its former affiliations are listed as religious independent from 1984 to 1998 and Pax from 1998 to 1999, with UPN carried as a secondary affiliation from 1998 to 2002. That secondary UPN carriage mattered in the market's history: before the Springfield relay WCFN broke away from WCIA in 2002 to become the market's first full-time UPN affiliate, UPN programmes in central Illinois had been seen in off-hours on the Decatur Pax outlet, channel 23. WPXU also carried some live CBS sports and other CBS programmes at times when the market's CBS affiliate, WCIA, was showing other sports, a practical overflow arrangement remembered in local viewing histories. In 1999 the station changed direction again, adopting the call sign WBUI on June 2, 1999, and joining The WB.
The WB Years and the Meaning of WBUI
As WBUI, the station was the Central Illinois affiliate of The WB from 1999 to 2006. The call sign itself encodes that affiliation and the station's geography: station references explain WBUI as referring to The WB, its former network, and the University of Illinois, an allusion to its service to Champaign-Urbana, home of the University of Illinois, at the eastern side of the market. The station was owned in this period by ACME Communications, a company founded by former WB network executives, which is why, when the industry realignment of 2006 came, WBUI's path was in a sense pre-set. It retained its secondary UPN affiliation for the first years of ACME ownership, an arrangement ACME expanded to stations in St Louis and Knoxville by 2000. When WCFN, now WCIX, joined UPN in 2002, WBUI became a sole WB affiliate. Gradually, from about 2000 until 2005, the station phased out most cartoons and classic sitcoms in favour of more recent sitcoms, talk shows and court shows, following the schedule pattern of WB affiliates nationally. It was also an over-the-air home for selected St Louis Cardinals baseball broadcasts, a significant service in a region where Cardinals fandom is strong.
Becoming The CW in 2006
In September 2006, The WB and UPN were merged into a new network, The CW. WBUI took The CW affiliation by default in that merger, as an ACME station owned by a former WB network executive, while WCFN joined the other new network service, MyNetworkTV. That decision gave channel 23 continuity through the realignment: the same station, under the same call sign chosen for The WB, carried the successor network without a gap. WBUI has remained the Central Illinois CW affiliate since then, branding as Central Illinois' CW and later simply CW 23. Its main channel, 23.1, carries The CW in the present multiplex. The call sign's WB reference is now historical, but it has been retained, as many stations retained call signs referring to defunct networks after 2006, because the letters had become the station's established identity in the market.
Sale to GOCOM Media in 2007
On June 20, 2007, GOCOM Media announced its intent to purchase WBUI from ACME Communications; the price was reported as $4 million. The sale was approved on September 14, 2007, by the Federal Communications Commission, which waived its duopoly rules for the sale. The Central Illinois market did not have enough separate station owners at the time to legally permit another duopoly under normal conditions, since there was already an existing duopoly in the market, Nexstar Broadcasting's WCIA and WCFN. ACME argued that it was losing money on WBUI and could not find a buyer that did not require a duopoly waiver. The sale to GOCOM Media officially closed on October 25, 2007. At that point the station consolidated its operations from its original studios at North Parkway Court in Decatur into WRSP's facilities in Springfield. GOCOM Media, through GOCOM Media of Illinois, LLC, remains the station's owner, pairing it in ownership with Fox affiliates WRSP-TV and WCCU.
Shared Services and the Move into the WICS Building
On December 31, 2012, Sinclair Broadcast Group closed on the purchase of the non-license assets of GOCOM's three television stations, WRSP, WCCU and WBUI, for approximately $25.6 million. Sinclair provided sales and other non-programming services to the stations under shared services and joint sales agreements. Both WBUI and WRSP were initially operated from separate facilities from WICS and WICD. WCCU quickly moved its advertising sales operation from South Neil Street 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's facility on East Cook Street. That arrangement continues in updated ownership form: station references now list WBUI's operator as Community News Media, the current owner of WICS and WICD, following WICS's sale by Sinclair to Rincon Broadcasting in March 2025 and its subsequent sale toward Community News Media. WBUI itself remains GOCOM-owned throughout, an example of how licence ownership and day-to-day operation can sit with different companies for more than a decade.
Programming and News Contributions
WBUI's programming consists mainly of The CW's prime-time schedule and syndicated fare in other hours. Syndicated programmes associated with the station in its WB and early CW years included programmes such as The Daily Buzz and reruns of Friends, That '70s Show and The King of Queens, reflecting the young-adult orientation of both networks. The station does not operate a full standalone news department. Instead, its news-related presence comes through its sister operation: its branding includes NewsChannel 20 Sunrise for morning newscasts and Fox Champaign News for 9 p.m. newscasts in station reference listings, tying it to the WICS-produced news family. WICS meteorologists have provided WBUI with on-air and online weather forecasts, in segments titled to play on the CW name, and after WFHL's own Newsline ended in 1991, later weather provision for channel 23 came through partners in the market, including a period in which WAND provided weather on WBUI. The result is a station whose local identity rests on its network, its Decatur licence and its sales office, while news and weather are supplied by the Springfield newsroom with which it shares a building.
Technical Information
WBUI broadcasts digitally on UHF channel 22, with virtual channel 23 retained from its analog channel, which it used from 1984 to 2009. Its Federal Communications Commission facility ID is 16363. Its digital effective radiated power is listed as 325 kilowatts, with earlier digital listings at 253 kilowatts and an analog effective radiated power of 1,950 kilowatts. Its height above average terrain is 401 metres, about 1,316 feet. Transmitter coordinates are approximately 39 degrees 56 minutes north and 88 degrees 50 minutes west. Station descriptions place the transmitter in Whitmore Township, between Oreana and Interstate 72, north of Decatur, and note that the signal covers most of central Illinois, providing at least secondary coverage around Champaign, Urbana, Springfield, Normal and Peoria. The station formerly had a low-power repeater, WEIL-LP channel 54 in Effingham, Illinois, extending its reach to the southeast of its main coverage area.
Digital Subchannels
WBUI's signal is multiplexed. Channel 23.1 carries The CW as the main service. Earlier listings for the station showed a second subchannel, 23.2, carrying This TV, a service featuring classic television series and movies, and subchannel line-ups for GOCOM and partner stations in the market have changed over time as multicast services launch, move and close nationally. In the current operating structure, WBUI's multiplex is managed alongside those of WRSP, WCCU, WICS and WICD from the shared Springfield facility, and the group participated in the market's NextGen TV launch activity for the Champaign and Springfield-Decatur market, in which GOCOM's WRSP, WCCU and WBUI were described in industry material as leading stations of that market owned by GOCOM Media of Illinois, with WRSP and WCCU affiliated with Fox and WBUI with The CW.
Place in Central Illinois Broadcasting
WBUI's career summarises four decades of change in small-market American television in a single channel position. It began as a locally rooted religious independent with its own local news show, passed through the Pax experiment, carried two now-defunct networks, The WB and, secondarily, UPN, and emerged as the CW affiliate for a combined market of three cities, Springfield, Champaign-Urbana and Decatur, none of which it could serve alone without the others. Its licence stayed in Decatur, its studios moved to Springfield, its transmitter stayed north of Decatur, and its owner since 2007, GOCOM Media, has never been the company that runs it day to day, first Sinclair and now Community News Media doing so through agreements. For viewers, none of that complexity is visible: channel 23 is simply CW 23, the Central Illinois home of The CW, at cw23tv.com, continuing a service that, under three network names, has been Decatur's entertainment-network station since 1999.
