Jacksonville, Illinois, saw the results of months of work with the broadcasts of its first television station, WJJY-TV, on August 17, 1969, after a near catastrophe. More on that below. The new TV station was developed by Keith Moyer (who developed WTIM Radio in Taylorville), who sought after many local investors to set the station up for business and serve the Quincy, Jacksonville, and even Springfield areas with ABC programming. To reach all the individual metro markets it would need to cover, a considerable undertaking was made to utilize one of the most powerful UHF transmitters manufactured. Plus, the special high-gain antenna would have to produce enough signal for people to watch WJJY in Quincy, Springfield, and the city of license in Jacksonville, Illinois.  The station went on the air with an extraordinary power output of 4.5 million watts of ERP from an antenna and massive tower at 1,610 feet near Bluffs, Illinois, west of Jacksonville. When the station was completed, it broke two impressive records. One was that it was broadcast using the most powerful UHF signal in the world, and secondly, it broadcast from the top-mounted antenna mast atop one of the three tallest structures in the Northern Hemisphere!

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From what I've determined, WJJY had a "special" ABC affiliation agreement, similar to what WDAN-TV had 12 years earlier, which required the station to broadcast everything offered by ABC with no pre-emptions. According to J. Mitch Hopper, on his website "The Rise and Fall of WJJY,"  Keith Moyer, the developer of the station, sold ABC on granting primary affiliation to WJJY and taking it away from KHQA, which at that time had ABC as a secondary affiliate. Moyer Television would agree to air everything that ABC aired for the length of the 5-year contract. The network signal would be microwaved in Jacksonville via a link on WLS-TV in Chicago. WJJY would also receive at least some network compensation, which would have been necessary for the financial success of the new TV station. 

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WJJY, in a unique way, eliminated the need for the station to purchase much in the way of syndicated programming.  Channel 14 would pre-record on videotape the Saturday morning cartoon schedule each weekend and rerun it in 1 1/2 hour segments on weekday afternoons from about 4:00 pm to 5:30 pm.

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WJJY-TV programmed local news, but the newsgathering technology of that era confined most of the attention to Jacksonville news, with only a few prominent local stories from Quincy or Springfield. The news did bring a couple of future Central Illinois personalities to the area, though. Jerry Slabe and Mike Cheevers would end up at WAND, with Slabe moving on to WCIA in the late 70s. A radio personality originally from Taylorville, John Mazzotti, also joined the staff.  I remember the weathercaster, Bob McClellan, who would draw cartoon characters, called weather widgets, to help illustrate the weather forecast.

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Mr. Moyer still had "connections" to my hometown of Taylorville, Illinois, with the address of 1232 West Main Cross Street listed as the "corporate" headquarters of LOOK Television. He hired at least two Taylorville people for on-air jobs at WJJY-TV: Jon Mazzotti (see WTIM AM/FM) and Jeri Mazzotti. I remember seeing a WJJY-TV station vehicle in Taylorville many times during 1969-70. 

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Unfortunately, WJJY-TV was the only UHF station available for viewing in the Hannibal, MO-Quincy, IL market, as virtually all homes were only equipped with VHF televisions/antennas. Viewership was sparse in that area. Meanwhile, WAND already served Springfield with ABC and other syndicated programming from Decatur. Jacksonville was on the outer fringe of both the Hannibal-Quincy market as well as the Springfield, Decatur, Champaign-Urbana, and Danville markets, and there wasn't enough business willing to pay the high cost of advertising on TV, especially when the audience just wasn't there.