WQRF
WQRF-TV, channel 39, is a television station in Rockford, Illinois, in the United States, affiliated with the Fox network. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group and operates alongside ABC affiliate WTVO, channel 17. The two stations share studios on North Meridian Road in Rockford, where WQRF-TV's transmitter is also located. WQRF signed on in November 1978 as Rockford's only independent station, built a schedule around classic programmes and live sports, and joined Fox in August 1989, eleven years after its launch. Within four years of joining Fox it ranked as one of the network's highest-rated stations. Its call sign is explained as standing for Quality Rockford. Since late 2003 the station has been part of Nexstar, and since 2005 it has been based at WTVO's facility, with WTVO producing its local newscasts, including the prime-time Fox 39 News at 9. Its website presence is shared with WTVO at mystateline.com, a name referring to Rockford's position near the Illinois-Wisconsin state line.
Sign-On in 1978 as an Independent
WQRF-TV first aired on November 27, 1978, broadcasting on analog UHF channel 39. It was the last full-power analog station to sign on in Rockford, and it was founded by businessman Marvin Palmquist. The first programme is recalled in station histories as an episode of the sitcom Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. Palmquist sold the station to Orion Broadcasting in 1984. As the only independent station in the market, WQRF had to fill an entire broadcast day without a network schedule, and it did so with a mixture of older off-network programmes and first-run syndicated fare. Among the earlier programmes listed for the station were I Love Lucy, The Bob Newhart Show, The Jeffersons and The Dick Van Dyke Show, together with first-run programmes such as Entertainment Tonight, the original nighttime edition of Family Feud, The PTL Club and The 700 Club. That mixture of classic reruns, syndicated entertainment and religious programming was typical of a late-1970s American independent station in a medium-sized market.
Sports on the Independent Schedule
Live sports were a second pillar of the independent-era schedule. Because it had no network commitments, WQRF stocked much of its programming with sports telecasts, including Major League Baseball from the Chicago White Sox, St. Louis Cardinals and Milwaukee Brewers, National Basketball Association games from the Chicago Bulls and Milwaukee Bucks, National Football League preseason action from the Chicago Bears, and college sports, specifically Big Ten Conference football and basketball. Rockford's location, within reach of Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Louis fan interests and close to Big Ten country, made that multi-team approach commercially sensible for a local independent. Over time, as Fox expanded its own prime-time and sports programming, much of WQRF's off-network rerun and sports inventory gradually disappeared from the schedule, and the expansion of Fox prime time and the later movement of Big Ten sports rights toward Fox made the station more competitive as a network affiliate than it had been as a stand-alone independent.
Family Group Broadcasting Era
Orion Broadcasting sold WQRF to Family Group Broadcasting in May 1986. Under Family Group, the station shared ownership and graphical imaging with a group of other stations that included WGBA-TV in Green Bay, Wisconsin, WVFT-TV in Roanoke, Virginia, WPGX in Panama City, Florida, WFGX in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, WLAX in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and WLKT in Lexington, Kentucky. The station later relocated its operations to a new building located on South Main Street, Illinois Route 2, in Rockford. That South Main Street base was its home before the later move to WTVO's North Meridian Road facility. The Family Group period covered the decisive change in the station's identity, the move from independent status to a Fox affiliation, and ended in the early 1990s, when Family Group sold the station onward, on September 12 of that year as recorded in station histories, to Petracom Broadcasting.
Joining Fox in 1989
WQRF joined Fox in August 1989. Before then, for the network's first three years of existence, cable subscribers in and around Rockford had watched Fox through Chicago's owned-and-operated WFLD, along with Madison's WMSN-TV and Milwaukee's WCGV-TV on the edges of the market, depending on location. Once WQRF affiliated, Rockford had its own Fox station for the first time. The affiliation was a success by the measure most often quoted for the station: within four years of joining Fox, WQRF ranked as one of the network's highest-rated stations. For a former independent in a market of Rockford's size, that ranking signalled both the strength of Fox's growing 1990s schedule and the advantage of being the sole local outlet for it. The station has remained a Fox affiliate continuously since 1989, and it brands itself on air simply as Fox 39, with Bounce Rockford used for its Bounce TV subchannel.
Petracom, Quorum and the Arrival of Nexstar
Family Group sold WQRF to Petracom Broadcasting in the early 1990s; Petracom station filings from the 1990s list WQRF-TV in Rockford among the company's television stations, with a Fox affiliation. Petracom in turn sold the station to Quorum Broadcasting in 1998. WQRF then joined Nexstar as part of that company's acquisition of Quorum Broadcasting in late 2003. Nexstar, now Nexstar Media Group, remains the owner, with the licence held through Nexstar Media Inc. The sequence of owners — Palmquist, Orion, Family Group, Petracom, Quorum and Nexstar — traces the wider consolidation of American local television in this period, from local and regional owners in the 1970s and 1980s to national station groups in the 2000s. Each transfer preserved the two constants in the station's modern identity: channel 39 in Rockford and the Fox affiliation acquired in 1989.
Partnership with WTVO
On November 22, 2004, Mission Broadcasting bought WTVO from Young Broadcasting for $21 million and entered into a shared services agreement involving WQRF. Under that arrangement WQRF moved into WTVO's studio, although WQRF is technically described as the senior partner in the pairing. WQRF-TV has been based out of WTVO's facility on North Meridian Road, west of central Rockford, since 2005. The two stations now share studios there, and WQRF's transmitter is also located at that site. Nexstar today operates WTVO, which is an ABC affiliate that also carries MyNetworkTV on a subchannel, alongside its own WQRF. The practical effects are shared news production, shared sales and a shared website. WTVO itself is historically notable as Rockford's oldest television station, having signed on in 1953 originally on channel 39 before moving to channel 17 in 1967, so the present arrangement reunites, under one roof, the channel 39 frequency's current station with the station that first used that channel in Rockford.
News Operation
WQRF's newscasts are produced by WTVO under the Eyewitness News branding shared by the two stations. In March 2006, WTVO began producing the market's second prime-time newscast on WQRF, known as Fox 39 News at 9. The broadcast originally aired only on weeknights, unlike the area's original prime-time show, which was seen every night on the cable-only WB affiliate known as "WBR" and produced by WREX. That distinction made WQRF's programme Rockford's first over-the-air newscast at 9 p.m. Competition between the WBR and WQRF programmes was short-lived, because in late 2007 WREX cancelled the former for a reason not publicly specified; that time slot later carried a replay of the NBC outlet's weeknight 6 o'clock show on what became a CW subchannel. WQRF eventually expanded Fox 39 News at 9 to a seven-night operation and lengthened the weeknight version to a full hour. Another addition came on January 14, 2008, when WTVO launched Fox 39 Evening News at 6:30 for WQRF; that 6:30 show was later dropped. On March 5, 2012, WTVO launched a two-hour extension of its weekday morning show on WQRF, known as Fox 39 More Local in the Morning, seen from 7 until 9 a.m. and offering a local alternative to the national morning programmes on the area's big three outlets. The WQRF weeknight prime-time newscast has used a separate news anchor while featuring the same meteorologist and sports anchor as WTVO, and on December 18, 2012, WTVO and WQRF debuted a new set, news music package and graphics scheme based on the Eyewitness News branding used at other Nexstar and Mission stations.
Digital Transition and Technical Information
WQRF-TV shut down its analog signal over UHF channel 39 on February 17, 2009, the original target date for full-power stations in the United States to transition from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate, before that deadline was later pushed back nationally to June 12, 2009. Its digital signal at the time remained on its pre-transition UHF channel 42, and through PSIP, digital receivers displayed the station's virtual channel as its former analog channel, 39. Its present digital channel is listed as 36, following the later broadcast spectrum repack, with virtual channel 39 retained. The station's Federal Communications Commission facility ID is 52408. Its effective radiated power is listed as 910 kilowatts, with a height above average terrain of 148.1 metres, about 486 feet. Transmitter coordinates are approximately 42 degrees 17 minutes north and 89 degrees 10 minutes west, at the North Meridian Road studio site in Rockford. The station's former channel numbers were analog 39 from 1978 to 2009 and digital 42 from 2005 to 2020.
Subchannels and Syndicated Programming
WQRF-TV's digital signal is multiplexed. The main channel, 39.1, carries Fox in high definition. The best-documented subchannel is 39.2, Bounce TV, branded as Bounce Rockford; earlier listings also showed an Escape service, now known nationally as Ion Mystery, on a further subchannel. As with other stations, multicast carriage changes over time as national services are launched and renamed. Outside network hours, WQRF's schedule is filled with syndicated programming, and its news and entertainment output is presented online through mystateline.com, the website it shares with WTVO. That shared site is the public digital home for both stations' Eyewitness News coverage of Rockford and the surrounding stateline area of northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin, covering local news, weather and sports for the market as a whole rather than for one channel alone.
Role in Rockford Broadcasting
WQRF-TV is Rockford's Fox voice and one of the market's longest-established channel positions. It arrived in 1978 as the market's only independent, survived the transition from locally programmed reruns and multi-city sports to a network schedule, and became, by its own early Fox-era record, one of the network's highest-rated affiliates. Its later history, inside Nexstar and sharing a building, a newsroom and a website with WTVO, shows how a mid-sized American market sustains multiple network affiliations: distinct channels and networks for viewers, combined operations behind the scenes. The station's name still states its founding promise in compressed form, Quality Rockford, and its on-air identity, Fox 39, has remained stable through digital transition, repacking and ownership change, from the analog channel 39 that Marvin Palmquist put on air in 1978 to the virtual channel 39 viewers select today.
