The station is owned by the Sinclair Broadcast Group, and maintains studios on East Cook Street in Springfield's Eastside; its transmitter is located west of Mechanicsburg, in unincorporated Sangamon County.

Although WICD maintains its own studios on South Country Fair Drive in downtown Champaign, master control and most internal operations are based at WICS' facilities.

WICS began operations on September 17, 1953, and was owned by Plains Television Partners of Springfield, which was a 50/50 joint venture of Transcontinental Properties and the H & E Balaban Corporation.

The FCC considered making East Central Illinois an all-UHF market but dropped these plans under heavy lobbying from WCIA.

At the same time, WCHU began breaking off from the WICS signal to air some local programming for the eastern side of the market, which was simulcast on WICD.

The company almost immediately turned around and announced it was selling the two (which count as one for regulatory purposes) plus KGAN in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to Sunrise Television.

WICS disappeared from the Terre Haute local feed in the fall of 2011 after that city's Fox affiliate, WFXW, rejoined ABC as WAWV-TV.

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 aired for a half-hour from a modified set at WICS' Springfield studios featuring unique duratrans indicating the Fox-branded show.

Although the WRSP/WCCU newscast features market wide coverage, including contributions from WICD reporters based in Champaign, there is a separate weeknight weather segment for WRSP and WCCU that was seen.

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.

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.

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

[7][8] While WICS and WICD operated separate news departments, there was a considerable amount of resource sharing between the two outlets, such as with video footage and personnel.

In June 2019, Sinclair fired Joe Crain, a weekday morning meteorologist who had been with WICS since 2006,[9] for speaking out on-air – during the June 5 edition of NewsChannel 20 Sunrise – against a group mandate to Sinclair's news-producing stations to denote threats of severe thunderstorm activity through "Code Red" alerts, regardless of the severity of the event being forecast, stating that the system was "created by, likely, a journalism school graduate", rather than a professional meteorologist.

[10][11][12][13][14] Despite complaints and comments from viewers on the station's social media platforms,[15] letters to the editor and local talk radio shows, Sinclair continued to mandate its meteorologists to use the terminology.

The station's social media page was flooded with comments from viewers demanding the reinstatement of Joe Crain, pushing the hashtag #IStandWithJoeCrain, while U.S.

[17] This is not the first time the station has taken issue with talent popular with their viewers; in 2015, chief meteorologist Ric Kearbey was unable to reach a deal with WICS on a new contract, while anchor Liz Foster resigned to take a new position in Charlotte, North Carolina.