Section A, story 15 min read
Chicago has a long line-up of free over-the-air TV. Point an antenna in the right direction and you can pick up the four big network newsrooms, the city’s PBS station, two Spanish-language networks and a handful of independent and specialty stations, each usually with extra subchannels. What confuses people is the numbering. The channel on your screen is often not the channel the signal actually uses, and several stations are licensed to towns such as Gary, Joliet or Aurora rather than Chicago itself. This list untangles it using the FCC’s Public Inspection File, the official record every licensed station keeps.
Two numbers for every station
Each station below has a virtual channel, the number your TV displays and the one the station uses in its branding, and an RF channel, the physical frequency the signal travels on. During a channel scan your TV reads the virtual number from the signal and files the station under it. That is why NBC 5 Chicago appears as channel 5 even though WMAQ-TV transmits on RF channel 33. Most of the time you never need the RF number, but it matters when you choose an antenna and when a station disappears after a frequency change.
The main Chicago stations
| Virtual | Call sign | What it calls itself | RF | City of license |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | WBBM-TV | CBS Chicago | 12 | Chicago |
| 5 | WMAQ-TV | NBC 5 Chicago | 33 | Chicago |
| 7 | WLS-TV | ABC7 Chicago | 22 | Chicago |
| 9 | WGN-TV | WGN | 19 | Chicago |
| 11 | WTTW | WTTW, Chicago’s PBS station | 25 | Chicago |
| 26 | WCIU-TV | The U | 23 | Chicago |
| 32 | WFLD | FOX 32 Chicago | 31 | Chicago |
| 44 | WSNS-TV | Telemundo Chicago | 29 | Chicago |
| 50 | WPWR-TV | — | 31 | Gary, IN |
| 66 | WGBO-DT | Univision Chicago | 35 | Joliet |
The names in the third column are the ones each station uses on its own website. Where a station’s site did not say clearly how it brands itself, the column is left blank rather than guessed.
More stations in the market
| Virtual | Call sign | Licensee in FCC files | RF | City of license |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 35 | WWTO-TV | Trinity Broadcasting of Texas | 32 | Naperville |
| 38 | WCPX-TV | ION Television License | 34 | Chicago |
| 60 | WXFT-DT | Unimas Chicago | 22 | Aurora |
| 62 | WJYS | Millenial Telecommunications | 21 | Hammond, IN |
Every station in both tables showed a licensed status in its FCC profile when this guide was checked. Two of them, WPWR-TV and WJYS, are licensed to Indiana cities, which is a reminder that the Chicago TV market spills across the state line into Northwest Indiana.
Why some channels share a signal
Look at the RF column and you will spot pairs. WFLD and WPWR-TV are both on RF 31, and both list Fox Television Stations as licensee. WLS-TV and WXFT-DT both show RF 22. Since the move to digital, stations can carry more than one program stream on a single RF channel, and partners can put two licensed stations on one transmitter. For a viewer this has a practical upside: if your antenna picks up one station of a pair, it should pick up the other, because they ride on the same signal.
Tip: If a channel vanishes, do not buy a new antenna first. Run a full channel scan. Stations occasionally move to a new RF channel or partner, and your TV only finds them again after a rescan.
The VHF catch with channel 2
Most Chicago stations transmit on UHF channels, numbers 14 and above. WBBM-TV is the exception in this list: its RF channel is 12, which is in the high VHF band. Many thin indoor antennas are designed mainly for UHF, and they can struggle with VHF channels even when every other station comes in clearly. If CBS is the one network you cannot receive, the antenna, not your location, is the likely cause. Look for a model that states it receives VHF as well as UHF. Our guide to TV Antennas in Chicago High-Rises: What Works When You Live Above the Street goes into this in more detail.
Subchannels: the numbers after the dot
After a scan you will see channels such as 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3. The number before the dot is the virtual channel; the number after it is a subchannel. The main program of each station is usually .1, and the extra streams carry other networks, classic shows, weather or shopping. WTTW, for example, says on its own history page that in 2003 it launched WTTW Prime, a separate stream of digital programming on 11.2. Subchannel line-ups change more often than main channels, so the list on your TV after a fresh scan is the most reliable one.
Stations licensed outside Chicago
A city of license is the community the FCC license names. It does not mean the station only serves that town. WGBO-DT is licensed to Joliet, WXFT-DT to Aurora, WWTO-TV to Naperville, and WPWR-TV and WJYS to Indiana cities across the state line, yet all of them aim at the wider Chicago audience. If you live in the far suburbs, the city of license can be a hint about which stations may come in more strongly where you are, but the transmitter location and your antenna matter more. Our guide to TV Reception in the Chicago Suburbs: Antennas for Houses, Distance and HOA Rules explains how to aim for the main group of stations from the edges of the market.
Where to watch the news
For daily local news the main choices are CBS Chicago on 2, NBC 5 on 5, ABC7 on 7, WGN on 9 and FOX 32 on 32, with Telemundo Chicago on 44 and Univision Chicago on 66 for Spanish-language coverage. WTTW on 11 is the public television option; its history page lists Chicago Tonight, a weeknight newsmagazine, among its long-running local programs. If you want to watch any of these without an antenna, our guide on How to Watch Chicago Local News Without Cable covers the apps and streams the stations offer.
How to get the full list on your TV
- Connect the antenna and place it as high as you can, near a window if it is indoors.
- Open your TV’s setup menu and choose Antenna or Air as the input source, not Cable.
- Run the full channel scan, often called Auto Program or Channel Search.
- Write down which channels appear, then move the antenna and scan again to compare.
- Keep the position that brings in the stations you watch most, including channel 2 on VHF.
Expect to find more channels than this list shows, because each station’s subchannels appear separately. Expect also to see a few stations come and go as you move the antenna; that is normal at the edge of reception and is usually solved by height rather than a more expensive antenna.
One last point about the numbers. Because the virtual channel is what stations promote, it rarely changes, even when the station moves its signal. If you remember a station as channel 9 or channel 32, that is still where your TV will put it after a rescan. The RF channel is the part that can change behind the scenes, and that is a job for the scan, not for you.