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WGN-TV
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WGN-TV, channel 9, is a television station in Chicago, Illinois. It has been owned by the Tribune Company since its inception, and is an affiliate of the CW Television Network. WGN-TV's studios and offices are located in the North Center neighborhood of Chicago, and the station transmits its analog signal from the John Hancock Center and digital signal from the Sears Tower.
WGN Television is one of several flagship properties owned by the Tribune Company, which also owns radio station WGN (720 kHz.) and publishes the Chicago Tribune, whose slogan ("World's Greatest Newspaper") was the basis for the call letters used by both stations.
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Encyclopedia
WGN-TV, channel 9, is a television station in Chicago, Illinois. It has been owned by the Tribune Company since its inception, and is an affiliate of the CW Television Network. WGN-TV's studios and offices are located in the North Center neighborhood of Chicago, and the station transmits its analog signal from the John Hancock Center and digital signal from the Sears Tower.
WGN Television is one of several flagship properties owned by the Tribune Company, which also owns radio station WGN (720 kHz.) and publishes the Chicago Tribune, whose slogan ("World's Greatest Newspaper") was the basis for the call letters used by both stations. The Tribune Company also operates Chicago area cable news channel Chicagoland Television (CLTV), which shares resources from both WGN-TV and the Chicago Tribune.
WGN-TV is also a pioneering superstation, and continues to program an alternate feed for cable and satellite subscribers throughout the United States and Canada, known as WGN America (formerly Superstation WGN). Its longtime slogan, "Chicago's Very Own", was the basis for a popular image campaign of the 1980s and 1990s, as performed by Lou Rawls.
History
WGN Television began test broadcasts in February 1948 and began regular programming on April 5 with a two-hour special, "WGN-TV Salute to Chicago", at 7:45 p.m.
Early on, WGN-TV was affiliated with the CBS and DuMont networks, sharing both with WBKB (channel 4). As a sidebar to the February 1953 merger of ABC and United Paramount Theatres, channel 9 lost its CBS affiliation. CBS had purchased the license to operate channel 4 in Chicago (now WBBM-TV, which later moved to channel 2), and moved all of its programming there, leaving channel 9 with DuMont. WGN-TV was one of the DuMont Network's strongest affiliates. Several DuMont programs, including The Al Morgan Show, Chicago Symphony, Chicagoland Mystery Players, Music from Chicago, The Music Show, They Stand Accused, This is Music, Windy City Jamboree, and Down You Go, were broadcast from WGN over the DuMont Network. When DuMont ceased operations in 1956, WGN-TV became an independent station.
After becoming a full-time independent, WGN-TV spent much of the next two decades as the top-rated independent station in Chicago, offering a variety of general-entertainment programs including movies, sports, off-network reruns, and children's shows. For much of its existence, channel 9 produced a large amount of its own programming at its own studios. Notable WGN-TV productions included several incarnations of the immensely popular Bozo's Circus, Ray Rayner and His Friends, and Garfield Goose and Friends (which was hosted by Frazier Thomas). WGN-TV also telecasted performances of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, beginning in 1953, when Fritz Reiner was the orchestra's music director. From 1974 until 1982, Phil Donahue's syndicated talk program originated from WGN-TV.
The station began broadcasting via satellite in 1978. This signal was picked up by many fledgling pay-cable television systems, as well as directly by satellite dish owners. This continent-wide exposure elevated WGN-TV to superstation status. Along with WOR-TV (now WWOR-TV) in New York City and WTBS (now WPCH-TV) in Atlanta, WGN-TV was among the first local stations to become a superstation.
But as WGN-TV gained national exposure, the station became vulnerable in the Chicago area and underestimated WFLD-TV's ability to buy top-rate shows like M*A*S*H, Happy Days and All in the Family. As a result, WFLD (channel 32) finished ahead of WGN-TV in the ratings by the end of 1979. WGN-TV continued with its format, acquiring top-rate programming and competing with WFLD even after additional independent stations signed on.
In 1990, due to syndication exclusivity rules, WGN-TV launched a separate national feed with alternate programming about half the time. It was a similar situation at WWOR-TV and the national "WWOR-EMI Service".
In 1994 weekday morning children's programming was replaced by WGN Morning News. This was eventually dropped by the national feed because certain segments of the newscast are not allowed to air outside the Chicago area under SyndEx rules. The national feed still airs the station's other newscasts. Also in 1994, the The Bozo Show was moved from weekday mornings to Sunday mornings until 2001, when the program was controversially discontinued by station management.
In 1995 WGN-TV became a network affiliate once again, this time with the newly-launched WB Television Network, which was operated by the Warner Bros. Television division of Time Warner, and of which the Tribune Company held a minority ownership. Channel 9 aired primetime WB network programming in the Chicago area but chose not to air Kids' WB, the network's block of children's programs. Those shows aired instead on WCIU-TV (channel 26), which had dropped its Spanish-language Univision affiliation at the start of 1995 for an English-language, general entertainment schedule. Initially, Superstation WGN aired WB primetime and children's programming nationally. This was done to make WB programming available in areas not yet served by a WB affiliate. In 1999, at the network's request, Superstation WGN stopped carrying primetime WB and Kids' WB network programming.
In 2004, WCIU-TV dropped Kids' WB programming and it was moved to WGN-TV's Chicago area signal.
In January 2006, The WB and UPN networks announced that they would merge to form a new network, The CW Television Network. On the same day the new network was announced, it also signed a 10-year affiliation agreement with most of Tribune's WB stations, including WGN-TV. The new network launched on September 18, 2006. The WGN America national feed does not carry any CW programming.
Although WGN America continues to be distributed in Canada, the Chicago area feed of WGN-TV is also carried by Bell TV and Star Choice satellite services, as well as most Canadian cable services. Bell TV has always carried the Chicago area feed but Star Choice and many cable services that carried Superstation WGN switched on January 17, 2007 when Shaw Broadcast Services, a primary supplier of Superstation WGN in Canada, switched to the Chicago area feed.
On April 2, 2007, Chicago investor Sam Zell announced plans to purchase the Tribune Company, with intentions to take the publicly-traded firm private. The deal was completed on December 20, 2007. Prior to the close of the sale, WGN-TV was one of two Chicago commercial television stations to have never been involved in an ownership transaction (WCIU is the other, having been owned by Weigel Broadcasting since its launch in 1964).
On July 19, 2008, WGN-TV began broadcasting its newscasts in High Definition, becoming the third Chicago station to do so.
On February 4, 2009, Tribune Broadcasting announced it is combining both WGN-TV and Chicagoland Television into one news powerhouse.
Max Headroom pirating incident
On November 22, 1987, during The 9 O'Clock News sportscast, WGN-TV's Chicago area signal was hijacked for approximately 25 seconds by an unknown person wearing a Max Headroom mask. This was only the first incident of that night involving the interruption of a television station's broadcast signal. Approximately two hours later, Chicago PBS station WTTW (channel 11) had its broadcast interrupted by the same person. WGN-TV's analog transmitter is atop the John Hancock Center and engineers were almost immediately able to thwart the video hacker by changing the studio-to-transmitter frequency, thus cutting the hacker off. Unfortunately for WTTW, its transmitter is atop Sears Tower and it was unable to stop the hacker before enduring almost two minutes of the hacker's interruption. These two stations are two of only five existing victims of what is called "broadcast signal intrusion". Subscription television network HBO, WJLA-TV, and Playboy TV are the other victims.
Digital television
| Channel | Programming |
|---|
| 9.1 / 19.1 | WGN-DT | | 9.2 / 19.2 | LATV |
After the analog television shutdown and digital conversion, which is tentatively scheduled to take place on June 12, 2009 , WGN-TV will continue digital broadcasts on its current pre-transition channel number, 19. However, through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers will display WGN-TV's virtual channel as 9.
In late June 2008, WGN-TV added LATV as a subchannel to its digital broadcast, as part of a deal between three Tribune Broadcasting stations (KDAF in Dallas and WPIX in New York City being the other two) and LATV. This subchannel originally aired The Tube Music Network until it shut down in October 2007, and then switched to a simulcast of the main WGN-TV channel with Spanish language dubs added to some of its programs in later months until the arrival of LATV.
Sports programming
Throughout its history, WGN-TV has had a long association with Chicago sports. Perhaps with the exception of the NFL's Chicago Bears, each of the city's major professional sports franchises, along with several area collegiate teams, have had its games televised over channel 9.
The station's relationship with the Chicago Cubs goes back to its inception in 1948, and was further cemented in 1981 when the Tribune Company purchased the National League franchise. At the same time, channel 9 was also broadcasting games of Chicago's American League team, the White Sox. Jack Brickhouse, the longtime sports director (and later vice president of sports programming) for the WGN stations, handled home game play-by-play duties for both teams until 1967, when the White Sox ended their first stint on WGN-TV, and continued to call Cubs games until his retirement from broadcasting in 1981. With both teams, Brickhouse called over 5,000 baseball games during his career, sharing the booth with announcers such as Milo Hamilton, Lou Boudreau, Vince Lloyd, and Lloyd Pettit.
The White Sox returned to WGN-TV for one season in 1981, during which Harry Caray was introduced into the WGN family. The following year, Caray was recruited from the South Side to replace Brickhouse as the Cubs' lead TV voice. For the next 16 years, primarily working with analyst Steve Stone, Caray further established his place among Chicago's most-beloved personalities. Like Brickhouse, Caray was known for displaying an unapologetic, home team-oriented enthusiasm to his game calls, punctuated with memorable signature catchphrases for big plays (such as Caray's "Holy Cow!" and Brickhouse's "Hey-hey!"). Caray also brought his unique rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" during the seventh-inning stretch to the channel 9 broadcast booth. With WGN-TV's prominence as a national superstation in the 1980s and '90s, Caray's fan base -- and that of the Cubs -- grew beyond Chicago and the Midwest.
After moving their games to WFLD-TV in 1982 for an eight-year-long run, the White Sox came back to WGN-TV in 1990 when co-owner Jerry Reinsdorf agreed to long-term deals with the station for both the Sox and his NBA franchise, the Chicago Bulls. The Bulls returned to WGN-TV at the start of the 1989-90 season, just in time for the Bulls' dominance of the NBA during the Michael Jordan era. The team had been on channel 9 previously from their inception in 1966 until 1985; Jack Brickhouse, Milo Hamilton, and a young Bob Costas were among those assigned to work as Bulls play-by-play announcers.
The NHL's Chicago Blackhawks were carried by the station from 1961 until 1975. WGN-TV's broadcasts were limited to away games only, as Blackhawks owner Bill Wirtz had long prohibited televised coverage of his team's home games. Following Bill Wirtz' death in September 2007, his son and successor Rocky Wirtz ended the home TV blackout, and announced on April 1, 2008 that channel 9 would become the Blackhawks' new broadcast home. The station will air 20 games per season through a three-year contract starting with the 2008-09 campaign.
In November 1999, WGN-TV and WCIU-TV entered into a programming arrangement involving sports coverage. Selected Bulls and White Sox games, and a handful of Cubs games, produced by and contracted to air CLTV on WGN-TV are broadcast on WCIU-TV for the Chicago market only. This is due to network affiliation contracts limiting the number of programming preemptions per year, and also due to rights restrictions put in place by the NBA which limit the WGN America feed to fifteen Bulls games per season. The remaining Bulls games produced by WGN-TV are split between the station's Chicago area signal and WCIU-TV. Blackhawks games on channel 9 will be exclusive to the Chicago market. All games airing on WGN-TV are produced in high definition.
Along with its coverage of professional teams, WGN-TV formerly broadcast football and basketball games of Chicago area college teams, such as Northwestern University, DePaul University, Loyola University, and other teams of the Big Ten Conference.
News Operation
Appropriate for a station owned by the Tribune Company, news has played an important role on WGN-TV from the station's beginnings. WGN-TV currently broadcasts a total of 37 hours of local news per week (with seven hours on weekdays and one hour each on Saturdays and Sundays). WGN America, the national superstation feed does not run all of WGN's newscasts. The WGN Morning News was dropped by the national feed in the late 1990s due to SyndEx rules prohibiting certain segments of the newscast from airing outside the Chicago area (this is the only known incidence in which Syndex rules caused the preemption of a newscast on cable systems outside of the main viewing area). The national feed does air the 9PM newscast (which is preempted on WGN America if a sporting event airs on the Chicago area feed that is not cleared to air on the superstation feed) and the Noon-1PM block of the midday newscast (the 11:30-Noon portion of the midday newscast and the 5:30PM newscast do not currently air on the superstation feed).
WGN-TV's newscasts are one of the most-watched newscasts in the Chicago area, and usually ranks first against WMAQ-TV, WLS-TV, WBBM-TV, and WFLD-TV in the ratings. WGN-TV's newscasts are well known in the Chicago area for the longevity of its on-air news staff. Current news anchors Dina Bair, Jackie Bange, Robin Baumgarten, Robert Jordan, Micah Materre, Allison Payne, Larry Potash, Steve Sanders, meteorologists Paul Konrad, Jim Ramsey, Tom Skilling, and sports anchors Rich King, and Dan Roan have all worked for WGN-TV for 10 years or more.
Past personalities
News/Station presentation
Newscast titles
Current
- WGN News (umbrella title; 1980s-present)
- WGN Morning News - weekday 5-9 a.m. newscast
- WGN Midday News - weekday 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. newscast
- WGN Evening News - weekday 5:30-6 p.m. newscast
- WGN News at Nine - nightly 9-10 p.m. newscast
Station slogans
- Chicago's Very Own (1980s-present)
Logos
See also
External links
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