Owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, the station has studios on South Country Fair Drive in Champaign, and its transmitter is located northeast of Homer, along the Vermilion–Champaign county line.

Although WICD maintains its own facilities, master control and most internal operations are based at WICS' studios on East Cook Street in Springfield's Eastside section.

The WCHU signal traveled about 15 miles (24 km) from a transmitter at its studios atop the Inman Hotel in Downtown Champaign.

That station had debuted on December 19, 1953, as a low-powered ABC affiliate broadcasting on channel 24 with a signal radiating about 25 miles (40 km) from its transmitter.

In 1994, Plains Television sold WICD to Guy Gannett, who pumped significant resources into the station, particularly its news department.

Due to contracts with satellite providers, for a long time WICS was the only ABC station in the market uplinked on the Champaign–Springfield–Decatur local feeds.

For the same reason, when Dish dropped WRTV from Indianapolis as the local ABC affiliate for the Terre Haute feed, it uplinked WICS rather than WICD.

Several on-air personnel at WICD performed "one-man-band" multimedia journalism duties such as shooting video, editing coverage, and producing.

The latter is identified as "WICS+" in ratings books and has continued battling WCIA for the top spot splitting the position over various time slots.

Along with several other Sinclair properties, WICS/WICD did not participate in the wider implementation of the company's now-defunct, controversial News Central format for their newscasts.

WICS/WICD, however, did air "The Point" (a one-minute conservative political commentary), that was also controversial and a requirement of all Sinclair-owned stations with newscasts until the series was discontinued in December 2006.

Known as NewsChannel at 9 on Fox Illinois, it airs for a half-hour from a modified set at WICS's Springfield studios featuring unique duratrans indicating the Fox-branded show.

From the start, NewsChannel at 9 competed with a newscast already established in the time slot on then-UPN affiliate WCFN (produced by WCIA).

Unlike the WRSP/WCCU show, WCFN's broadcast originated from WCIA's Champaign facilities but was targeted specifically at a Springfield audience.

Although the WRSP/WCCU newscast featured market wide coverage, including contributions from WICD reporters, there was a separate weeknight weather segment seen on WRSP and WCCU.

The effort on WRSP/WCCU was further expanded on January 20, 2014, when WICS began producing a two-hour weekday morning show for the Fox affiliates.

On June 26, 2010, rival WAND became the first television station in East-Central Illinois to upgrade news production to high definition level.

Until October 13, 2014, WICD's separate weekday newscasts at its Champaign studios were not included in the upgrade because that set lacked high definition cameras.

[6] On March 13, 2015, Sinclair announced that WICD would shut down its separate news department and cancel its weekday newscasts focused on the eastern areas of the market.

In its place are newscasts simulcast from WICS (in all time slots) which provide market-wide coverage, including content from the eastern areas through a downsized bureau at WICD's studios.

Despite this significant reduction, WICD began airing a full hour-long Champaign-based prime time newscast (weeknights at 9) on WCCU on April 7, 2015, entitled Fox Champaign News at Nine.