The station first signed on the air on January 4, 1966, as an independent station. WFLD was founded by a joint venture of the parties that each competed individually for the license and construction permit to operate on UHF channel 32. Field Enterprises—owned by heirs of the Marshall Field's department store chain, and publishers of the "Chicago Sun-Times" and the "Chicago Daily News"—was the station's majority partner (with a 50% interest) and was responsible for managing WFLD's day-to-day operations; they were led by veteran broadcasting executive Sterling C. (Red) Quinlan. The station originally operated from studio facilities located within the Marina City complex on State Street. Channel 32 was christened the "Station of Tomorrow" by an April 1966 "Sun-Times" article because of its innovative technical developments in broadcasting its signal. It also broadcast news programming from the "Sun-Times/Daily News" newsroom. From the fall of 1967 to summer of 1970, WFLD aired the final hour of CBS' Saturday daytime schedule from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m., in lieu of the network's owned-and-operated station WBBM-TV (channel 2).