Since WIFR's over-the-air coverage area is effectively limited to Rockford itself and close-in suburbs in Winnebago County, it relies mostly on cable and satellite for its viewership.

Gray Television sold WIFR's spectrum in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s incentive auction for $50,060,965; at the time, the station indicated that it planned to enter into a post-auction channel sharing agreement.

[6] Gray had acquired W22EE-D from DTV America in an eight-station deal in 2016; it had never commenced any previous on-air operations since the call letters were issued on May 17, 2011, nor constructed any facilities.

[1] On November 18, 2019, WIFR-LD attempted a transfer to its post-reallocation channel 28 from a temporary lower-power antenna lower on their transmitter tower, but moved back to 41 in a matter of days with the permission of T-Mobile, which would eventually hold that spectrum.

This is due to channel 28 also being allocated to the northeast in Milwaukee to full-power ABC affiliate WISN-TV and causing cross-channel interference in portions of Boone and McHenry counties.

Gray's transition of WIFR-LD's regular higher-power signal at the former position of the channel 41 antenna was delayed several months from spring 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic causing a lack of tower maintenance crews across the United States.

On May 28, 2015, its third subchannel launched, taking an affiliation with the Justice Network on July 27; in the interim it carried that year's Rockford Public School District 205 graduation and overflow games unable to be aired on 23.2.

The Bulls and White Sox, alongside the Chicago Blackhawks (the team the IceHogs had been the minor league affiliate of since their American Hockey League promotion in 2007), would make a de facto return to the station in 2024, when their new Chicago Sports Network announced it would add an over-the-air affiliate in Rockford on the WSLN 19.2 subchannel, with 19.3 also carrying the network to accommodate potential overflow in a manner similar to how the WIFR subchannels had previously.