Welcome to Central Illinois' On-Line Broadcast Museum. This website documents in detail the history of each of the viewable TV stations, past and present, across mid-Illinois in text, photos, and videos, as well as each station's current status. This site also includes local radio history and automated analog formats, again told in pictures, videos, and text. ​​

It's no secret that local TV, like all other forms of local media, is under attack. Newspapers have reduced staff and publication schedules, outsourcing printing and home delivery. Local radio has been consolidated into groups of stations, sometimes nearly squashing any local competition. Radio newsrooms have been gutted, and newscasts have been eliminated. 

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Recent moves by Allen Media ended employment for many of its local TV meteorologists and weathercasters. (The Allen Group later reversed its action in most of the station's markets.) The company's initial plan was to have their weathercaster's roles filled by the co-owned Weather Channel and produced by people who had no local connection to the local station's markets. Hearing them mispronounce the names of counties, cities, and towns would have been humorous but would have damaged the credibility of the Allen Media stations in each of its markets. 

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A similar initiative by Sinclair Broadcast Group to provide local news and weather for its many independent and FOX Network affiliates (and probably some of their major network affiliates) failed over twenty years ago.

You can bet that technology is improving every day, so much so that it's just a matter of time before someone uses AI to replace anchors, weathercasters, sportscasters, reporters, producers, and directors to bring what viewers that are left a totally AI local news broadcast.  

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With all that in mind, from February 8th through the 22nd, I featured a dozen videos from the past from local TV stations seen in least parts of mid-Illinois. From now through March 8th, I present even more local station videos.  I include historical news segments, station breaks, promos, and more from Mid-Illinois' local stations from the 1960s through 2013.  All are generated by real people in the markets they serve! Unfortunately, virtually no videos exist from local stations from the 1950s and 60s, and very little exists from the 1970s. I do include many pictures from the early days on this website under the various TV station histories.

Plus, for classic radio, we go back to September of 1975 with an aircheck featuring my friend Larry Linbach from WDZ, 1050AM, Decatur, Illinois. 

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Watch and listen to the Videos of the Week until late March 8, 2025.

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If you like videos, you should visit my YouTube channel. Explore it, give me a "LIKE" for the videos you watch, and subscribe to it. Click on the "YouTube" logo below to go directly to my Channel.

Margaret Whiting was a well-known singer from the 1940s and 50s, mostly heard now at Christmas time, as she recorded several holiday songs that are still heard today. In this video, she appeared at the "Little Theater on the Square" in Sullivan, Illinois. The theater hosted many major stars in Broadway-type shows. The videos above were recorded at the WCIA studios on kinescope earlier, then played back as part of "The Hop" the following Saturday afternoon.

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Classic Radio

Click on the image to listen to the video directly from YouTube.