WLHB

WLHB is a CW affiliated station in Rockford, Illinois. It is owned by Lake Hill Broadcasting. It is a sister station to Telemundo affiliate WLTH-LD. The two stations share studios on Marion Avenue in Rockford, with transmitter facilities also located on Marion Avenue. WLHB also provides master control operations for Semi-Satellite and Newsfix station WZOP-LD in Beloit, Wisconsin, who Simulcasts select WLHB newscasts. It is considered to be the flagship station of Lake Hill Broadcasting, since the company is headquartered in Chicago, and Lake Hill does not own a station in the Chicago area.
==History==
WLMB signed on in June 1973 as WRFD. It carried a mix of religious and paid programming, with low budget movies on during the weekends. The station did not get many viewers during the early years and was operating at a loss. The station was headquartered at the Camelot Tower near downtown Rockford, where it also maintained transmitter facilities. The facility was shared with the local hospital next door. 
The station was owned by Rockford Television LLC until 1999, where it was sold to Sinclair Broadcasting. Sinclair reformed WRFD, with the station airing syndicated programming during the day, and movies during primetime. 
In 2013, Sinclair sold the station to Lake Hill Broadcasting. It came as the owner of the building that WRFD used informed the station that they will no longer let the station use their facilities starting in 2015. As a result, Lake Hill built studio and transmitter facilities at Marion Avenue, where Lake Hill bought the land that used to be an elementary school from the local school district. The school sat vacant for 2 years as a result of a reform plan the school district had. Along with the change of location, the call letters changed to WLHB. A news department was launched as well.
On July 7, 2021, The CW announced that WLHB would become the Rockford market's CW affiliate. It gave the area over the air access to the CW for the first time in the network's history. Previously, cable and satellite operators piped in Chicago's WJHT-DT.
On July 25, 2021, WLTH-LD discontinued the WLHB simulcast on 45.2, and picked up The Chance Network. To give the network market wide coverage, WLHB simulcast the channel on 8.5, as well as on WZOP-LD on 11.3.
==Newscasts==
WLHB originally did not have a newscast until 2003, when Sinclair launched a primetime newscast on the station. Titled "RFD 8 News at 9," it was part of Sinclair's controversial News Central format, with national reports, national sports, and local weather being produced at Sinclair's headquarters near Baltimore. Local news and sports reports were produced at WRFD's studios in Rockford. The newscast was cancelled in 2005 due to low ratings as Sinclair started to wind down its News Central operations. 
In 2015, Lake Hill announced the relaunch of newscasts on WLHB. It premiered the same year, with newscasts weekdays from 4-9, 1-2, 5:30-8, 11-11:30, and weekends from 4-7, 5-6, and 11-11:30. The station maintains additional newsrooms in Belvidere, Freeport, and Winnebago. 
WLHB also produces Spanish language newscasts for WLTH, with a team of eight reporters reporting exclusively for the newscasts. The newscasts also contain separate anchors, meteorologists, and sports anchors. The newscasts air weekdays at 5 and 10pm, and weekends at 10pm. 
Since the launch of Newsfix in 2020, WLHB has assisted in production of the newscasts whenever the main studios and facilities were unavailable. For this reason, Lake Hill maintains a separate team of reporters that only appear on Newsfix whenever situations in Chicago occur. During normal days, those reporters are in charge of creating articles for Newsfix and Lake Hill. Two people at the sales department for WLHB also do sales for Newsfix and PodVision. For those reasons, Lake Hill also maintains a corporate office near the newsroom.
After WLHB obtained The CW affiliation, the station dropped its 6:30, 7pm, and 11pm newscasts, and replaced them with a 9pm and 10pm newscast. Both are an hour long. 
On January 2, 2023, the station rebranded its newscasts to tie into its Stateline NOW streaming news channel, with the WLHB newscasts being simulcast on the streaming news channel.
Category:Lake Hill Broadcasting
Category:Rockford, Ilinois
Category:Independent television stations
Category:Channel 8
Category:Illinois