The station originally went on the air as an independent station on January 4, 1966. WFLD was created by a joint venture of the parties who contested for the license and building permission to operate on UHF channel 32 independently. Field Enterprises, which was owned by the heirs of the Marshall Field's department store chain as well as the publishers of the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Daily News, was the station's majority partner (with a 50% stake) and was in charge of managing WFLD's day-to-day operations; it was led by veteran broadcasting executive Sterling C. (Red) Quinlan. The station was initially broadcast from studios on State Street in the Marina City complex. An April 1966 Sun-Times story dubbed Channel 32 the "Station of Tomorrow" due to its remarkable technical breakthroughs in transmitting its signal. It also aired newscasts from the Sun-Times/Daily News newsroom. WFLD broadcast the final hour of CBS' Saturday afternoon schedule from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. from the fall of 1967 until the summer of 1970, in place of the network's owned-and-operated station WBBM-TV (channel 2).