Move to channel 50
Eychaner showed an interest quickly in acquiring another license to make WPWR a full-time station. In Gary, Indiana, Great Lakes Broadcasting—formerly known as GWWX-TV—had held a construction permit since 1981 to build WDAI, a television station on channel 56.[2] When it applied for the station in 1979, GWWX-TV had proposed part-time subscription television operation, as well as news and information for the African American community.[3] A technical problem, however, impeded a key part of GWWX's plans. GWWX was the second channel 56 permitholder to seek approval to place the station on the Sears Tower. The first one was Greater Media Television, which had held the construction permit for WGMI and was denied in its plan to locate the facility there in 1968 because the Sears Tower site did not meet spacing requirements to two allocations in southeast Wisconsin: channel 49 at Racine and channel 55 at Kenosha.[4] Additionally, channels 56 and 60 could not co-exist at the same site per channel spacing rules. As such, GWWX amended its application to specify a tower in Park Forest, Illinois, enabling the FCC to grant the application in November 1981.
By 1984, WDAI was still unbuilt; the other allocation to Gary, noncommercial channel 50, was also silent. Public outlet WCAE had folded in 1983 because the Lake Central School Corporation could no longer support the station. The license had been transferred to Northwest Indiana Public Broadcasting, which was attempting to raise funds to rebuild channel 50 from a newer, more centrally located facility in the region. Eychaner saw an opportunity: he bought a majority stake in Great Lakes and its WDAI construction permit and then paid Northwest Indiana Public Broadcasting $684,000 to join it in a petition to switch the statuses of channel 50 and 56 and then assign the WDAI permit to channel 50—enabling it to be built on the Sears Tower—and WCAE to the newly noncommercial channel 56. The FCC approved such swaps among channels in the same band, as was the case with the two UHF stations, in March 1986,[5] and in August, the commission issued final orders switching the commercial and noncommercial allocations for Gary.[6] The money Northwest Indiana Public Broadcasting received from Metrowest enabled it to land a federal grant to build out its facility, which returned to the air November 15, 1987, as WYIN.
The move may have been initially planned to allow both WPWR and WBBS to go full-time on their own channels.[7] However, market conditions intervened during this time that would force WBBS-TV off the air. In the spring of 1985, WSNS announced it would exit subscription television and become a full-time affiliate of the Spanish International Network (today's Univision). WCIU, the previous SIN outlet in Chicago, then took an affiliation with the NetSpan network. WBBS-TV owner Miyares, realizing that the loss of the NetSpan affiliation would be crippling for his station, reduced WBBS' programming schedule to 8 p.m. to its late-night sign-off on weekend evenings late that year, selling the rest of the weekday time periods that his station had occupied to Eychaner, allowing WPWR to broadcast full-time on weekdays. WBBS shut down for good in early 1986;[8] Miyares sold WBBS' remaining airtime on the channel to Eychaner, turning WPWR into a 24-hour operation, until Eychaner's purchase of the WBBS-TV license for $11 million closed on August 22, 1986, when WPWR-TV went full-time.
The following year, only able to own one station, Eychaner sold the channel 60 license to the Home Shopping Network (HSN) for $25 million, in order to move WPWR-TV's programming and call sign to UHF channel 50. When the frequency swap occurred on January 18, 1987,[9] WPWR moved to channel 50, with a rerun of the anthology series Night Gallery as the first program it aired on its new frequency; the now HSN-owned channel 60 simultaneously had its call letters changed to WEHS (it is now UniMás owned-and-operated station WXFT-DT).
As time went on, WPWR began acquiring many cartoons, more recent off-network sitcoms, drama series, movies and first-run syndicated shows (including Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987 and War of the Worlds in 1988; at least one Star Trek spinoff would air on WPWR from that time until June 2005, when UPN aired the last network episode of Star Trek: Enterprise). Within a year of starting full-time operation on channel 50, WPWR had firmly established itself as the third independent station in Chicago, behind WGN-TV (channel 9) and future sister station WFLD (channel 32). Although WFLD had become a charter owned-and-operated station of Fox in October 1986, that network would not air a full week's worth of programming until September 1993, so for all intents and purposes it was still programmed as an independent. In late August 1994, the station began carrying the Spelling Premiere Network syndication service, which featured a "Spelling Success" run of past series produced by Aaron Spelling and his company.[10]
