WHOI (TV)
WHOI (channel 19) is a television station in Peoria, Illinois, United States, broadcasting the digital multicast network TBD.
Owned and operated by Sinclair Broadcast Group, the station maintains a transmitter on Springfield Road (along I-474) in East Peoria, a section of Groveland Township, Tazewell County.
In 1965, Metromedia sold the station to Mid-America Media, owners of WIRL radio (1290 AM) who, on September 13 of that year, changed the call sign to WIRL-TV.
When Benedek declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2002, WHOI was sold to Chelsey Broadcasting instead of Gray Television (which is coincidentally the current owner of WEEK-TV after acquiring Quincy Media in 2021).
In April 2004, WHOI, KHQA-TV in the Hannibal, Missouri–Quincy, Illinois media market, and WEYI-TV in Saginaw, Michigan, became three of the founding stations of Barrington Broadcasting.
WHOI carried some programming from UPN, including Star Trek: Voyager, from the network's launch in January 1995[5] until WAOE (channel 59) went on the air in 1999.
It resulted in WHOI closing its longtime studios near its transmitter in Creve Coeur and moving into WEEK-TV's facility on Springfield Road, along I-474, in East Peoria.
[9] Sinclair already owned the license of WYZZ-TV (channel 43), which was sold to Cunningham Broadcasting to satisfy Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations on duopoly ownership.
[12] On July 26, 2016, Quincy Media announced that it had acquired WHOI's ABC and CW affiliations, and would consolidate them onto subchannels of WEEK beginning August 1, 2016.
