WLS-TV

WLS-TV, virtual channel 7 (UHF digital channel 44), is an ABC owned-and-operated television station located in 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.

History

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, now WBBM-TV on channel 2), 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 WJZ-TV (now WABC-TV) in New York City (its sister stations in Detroit, San Francisco and Los Angeles signed on within a year of WENR's launch). 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 radio, with which it shared a frequency under a time-sharing arrangement until ABC purchased a 50% interest in WLS in 1954).