WQAD-TV

WQAD-TV

Moline–Rock Island, Illinois Davenport–Bettendorf, Iowa United States
City	Moline, Illinois
Channels	Digital: 31 (UHF) Virtual: 8
Branding	WQAD News 8 My TV 8-3 (DT3)
Programming
Affiliations	8.1: ABC 8.3: MyNetworkTV for others, see § Subchannels
Ownership
Owner	Tegna Inc. (Tegna Broadcast Holdings, LLC)
History
First air date	August 1, 1963 (60 years ago) (1963-08-01)
Former channel number(s)	Analog: 8 (VHF, 1963–2009) Digital: 38 (UHF, 2001–2020)
Call sign meaning	Quad Cities[1]
Technical information[2]
Licensing authority	FCC
Facility ID	73319
ERP	1,000 kW
HAAT	328 m (1,076 ft)
Transmitter coordinates	41°18′44.5″N 90°22′46.2″W / 41.312361°N 90.379500°W / 41.312361; -90.379500
Links
Public license information	Public file LMS
Website	wqad.com www.mytv8-3.com (DT3)

WQAD-TV (channel 8) is a television station licensed to Moline, Illinois, United States, serving the Quad Cities area as an affiliate of ABC. Owned by Tegna Inc., the station maintains studios on Park 16th Street in Moline, and its transmitter is located in Orion, Illinois.

Channel 8 was a comparatively late addition to the market; the allocation was removed from Peoria, Illinois, as part of contentious channel planning proceedings there. Eight different companies pursued the permit to build the station, with Moline Television Corporation prevailing in 1962 after years of hearings. WQAD-TV began broadcasting on August 1, 1963, as the Quad Cities' ABC affiliate. Lingering disputes from the comparative hearing process stretched into the 1970s and impeded an attempted sale of the station.

In 1977, the Des Moines Register and Tribune Company acquired WQAD-TV. It made changes to the local newscasts in an attempt to lift them out of second- and third-place positions, but it has remained in second, as a variety of owners have been unable to put the station ahead of dominant KWQC-TV in the Quad Cities market. The current owner, Tegna, acquired WQAD-TV in 2019 as part of a divestiture package from the merger of Tribune Media and Nexstar Media Group. In addition to its main ABC programming, WQAD-TV programs "MyTV 8-3", a digital subchannel with MyNetworkTV and other programming.