WAND (TV)

WAND (channel 17) is a television station licensed to Decatur, Illinois, United States, serving the Central Illinois region as an affiliate of NBC. Owned by Block Communications, the station maintains studios on South Side Drive in Decatur, and its transmitter is located along I-72, between Oreana and Argenta.

Channel 17 was the first station built in the market, signing on as WTVP on August 16, 1953. Originally an affiliate of ABC, it was owned by local non-broadcast investors and struggled due to its impaired reach. Investments were made in facilities and programming under Metromedia in the early 1960s, but it was as the first television station property owned by LIN Broadcasting that the station activated a more powerful transmitter facility and changed its call sign to WAND in 1966. The tower collapsed in a 1978 ice storm and was not rebuilt for more than a year, hindering the station's reach. LIN sold majority ownership to Block Communications in 2000, but it continued to operate the station until Block purchased the remainder in 2007. During that time, WAND switched affiliations from ABC to NBC as part of a new group affiliation agreement between LIN and NBC.

As the station's media market is spread out among several stations in different cities, the station's news ratings strength is concentrated within Decatur and Macon County, with lesser figures in the areas of Springfield and Champaign–Urbana.

Decatur was assigned ultra high frequency (UHF) channels 17 and 23 when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) lifted its four-year freeze on TV station grants in 1952. While Decatur radio stations WSOY and WDZ announced plans to apply, neither had done so by October 1952, when the Prairie Television Company applied for channel 17. Its president was W. L. Shellabarger, who had previously led a soy mill company. The commission quickly issued Prairie a construction permit on November 20, and the station shortly after took the call sign WTVP.

Construction began on a facility south of the city along the Sangamon River, including an interim transmitter facility (a 1-kilowatt transmitter was all that was available, leaving a 10-kilowatt unit to be installed at a later date). Fabrication of the station's transmitting antenna had become the principal obstacle to going on the air by the start of July, with eight changes in the promised shipping date from the manufacturer, RCA. Even while construction was drawing to a close, issues were emerging involving another station planning to get on the air: WCIA (channel 3) of Champaign, which had hoped to move its transmitter slightly to the east and improve its coverage of Decatur. WTVP contended that WCIA's proposed relocation had hampered its efforts to obtain a network affiliation, even though it had announced plans months earlier to affiliate with CBS, WCIA-TV wound up with that affiliation.

The antenna arrived in Decatur and was erected on August 2; 10,000 people turned out at the studios for a previously scheduled open house and to see the antenna hoisted atop the 550 feet (170 m) tower. The first test pattern went out two days later, and WTVP began telecasting on August 16, 1953. The station was a primary affiliate of ABC, though in the first months, programming from all the major networks—ABC, CBS, NBC, and DuMont Television Network—was shown.

Months after going on the air, the station was roiled by a management crisis. The station did not sign on as scheduled on January 20, 1954. Soon afterward, it emerged that three executives—general manager Harold Cowgill, chief engineer James Wulliman, and program director Paul Taff—had resigned instead of complying with an ultimatum from principal owner Shellabarger. Station stockholders sought to cut expenses by reducing staff and reassigning job duties. The station did not return to the air until that evening; even then, it could only air the audio portion of the Backstage for Polio benefit concert. Normal operations resumed the following afternoon. A total of 20 employees resigned, all of them identically claiming "an unstable administrative situation" and "proposed changes in program policy". At the time, the station had 47 employees, more than double the number of staffers employed by WCIA and WICS in Springfield and three times as many as WBLN in Bloomington. One of the departing executives, Cowgill, went as far as to announce his intention to apply for channel 23 so as to compete with WTVP.

WTVP also had to contend with the uneven structure of television in Central Illinois. WCIA, as a very high frequency (VHF) station, had a larger coverage area, better ratings, and more advertiser support than WTVP, WICS, or other UHF outlets. Shortly after WTVP and WICS failed at the end of 1957 in their joint bid to force WCIA to move to a UHF channel, in April 1958, Shellabarger sold controlling interest in the station to a group of Chicago businessmen fronted by advertising executive George Bolas. Several members of the Swanson family were also represented in the ownership.