WGN is a
radio stationRadio broadcasting is a one-way wireless transmission over radio waves intended to reach a wide audience. Stations can be linked in radio networks to broadcast a common radio format, either in broadcast syndication or simulcast or both...
in Chicago, Illinois,
USAThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. It is the only radio station owned by the
Tribune CompanyThe Tribune Company is a large American multimedia corporation based in Chicago, Illinois. It is the nation's second-largest newspaper publisher, with ten daily newspapers and commuter tabloids including Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Hartford Courant, Orlando Sentinel, South Florida...
, which also owns the flagship television station
WGN-TVWGN-TV, virtual channel 9 , is the CW-affiliated television station in Chicago, Illinois built, signed on, and owned by the Tribune Company. WGN-TV's studios and offices are located at 2501 W...
, the
Chicago TribuneThe Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
newspaper and
ChicagoChicago is a monthly magazine published by the Tribune Company. It concentrates on lifestyle and human interest stories, and on reviewing restaurants, travel, fashion, and theatre from or nearby Chicago. Its circulation in 2004 was 165,000, larger than People in its market...
magazine locally. WGN's transmitter is located in
Elk Grove Village, IllinoisElk Grove Village is a municipality located in northeastern Illinois adjacent to O'Hare International Airport and the City of Chicago. Elk Grove Village encompasses in land area with located in Cook County and located in DuPage County, Illinois. The population was 32,745 at the 2010 census...
. The station has a news-talk format and is the flagship station of the
Chicago CubsThe Chicago Cubs are a professional baseball team located in Chicago, Illinois. They are members of the Central Division of Major League Baseball's National League. They are one of two Major League clubs based in Chicago . The Cubs are also one of the two remaining charter members of the National...
, the
Chicago BlackhawksThe Chicago Blackhawks are a professional ice hockey team based in Chicago, Illinois. They are members of the Central Division of the Western Conference of the National Hockey League . They have won four Stanley Cup championships since their founding in 1926, most recently coming in 2009-10...
,
Northwestern UniversityNorthwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
football and men's basketball, and was the longtime Chicago outlet for
Paul HarveyPaul Harvey Aurandt , better known as Paul Harvey, was an American radio broadcaster for the ABC Radio Networks. He broadcast News and Comment on weekday mornings and mid-days, and at noon on Saturdays, as well as his famous The Rest of the Story segments. His listening audience was estimated, at...
until his death on February 28, 2009.
Since around 1990, WGN has been mainly a news and talk radio station. WGN broadcasts news, weather, traffic and sports every hour. Until the passing of
Ron SantoRonald Edward Santo was an American professional baseball player and long-time radio sports commentator. He played in Major League Baseball from 1960 to 1974, most notably as the third baseman for the Chicago Cubs. A nine-time All-Star, he was a powerful hitter who was also a good defensive...
in December 2010, he and
Pat HughesVergil Patrick "Pat" Hughes has been the play-by-play voice of the Chicago Cubs, working for WGN radio, since 1996. He partnered with color commentator Ron Santo, former All-Star third baseman for the Cubs from 1996 until 2010, when Santo died of cancer. Their unique on-air chemistry came to be...
served as the play-by-play team for all games of the
Chicago CubsThe Chicago Cubs are a professional baseball team located in Chicago, Illinois. They are members of the Central Division of Major League Baseball's National League. They are one of two Major League clubs based in Chicago . The Cubs are also one of the two remaining charter members of the National...
, and the broadcasts were known as the
Pat and Ron ShowThe Pat and Ron Show was the nickname of the Chicago Cubs' radio broadcasts on WGN Radio 720 AM and the Cubs Radio Network from 1996 through 2010...
.
WGN is a high-powered clear channel AM station (50,000 watts), which during nighttime hours is often audible over much of the
USAThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, parts of
CanadaCanada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, and sometimes as far away as
AustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
,
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and
South AmericaSouth America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...
. The station also has a 24/7 Internet
streamStreaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider.The term "presented" is used in this article in a general sense that includes audio or video playback. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather...
on its website, which carries the station's broadcast programming except for commercial breaks and Cubs games, when
public service announcementA public service announcement or public service ad is a type of advertisement featured on television, radio, print or other media...
s, station promotions, host-read commercials and alternate programming, is played instead.
WGN is responsible for activation of the Chicago metropolitan area
Emergency Alert SystemThe Emergency Alert System is a national warning system in the United States put into place on January 1, 1997, when it superseded the Emergency Broadcast System , which itself had superseded the CONELRAD System...
when
hazardous weather alertsThis article describes the United States National Weather Service severe weather terminology. The NWS defines precise meanings for nearly all its weather terms. This article describes NWS terminology and related NWS weather scales...
,
disaster areaA disaster area is a region or a locale heavily damaged by either natural hazards, such as tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, earthquakes, technological hazards including nuclear and radiation accidents, or sociological hazards like riots, terrorism or war. The population living there often...
declarations, and
child abductionsAn AMBER Alert or a Child Abduction Emergency is a child abduction alert bulletin in several countries throughout the world, issued upon the suspected abduction of a child, since 1996...
are issued.
History
The predecessor to the current WGN was
WDAP, which was started on May 19, 1922, by Thorne Donnelley and Elliott Jenkins. Starting in the
Wrigley BuildingThe Wrigley Building is a skyscraper located directly across Michigan Avenue from the Tribune Tower on the Magnificent Mile...
, they moved the station to the
Drake HotelThe Drake Hotel, 140 East Walton Place, Chicago, Illinois, is a luxury full-service hotel, located downtown on the lake side of Michigan Avenue two blocks north of the John Hancock Center and a block south of Oak Street Beach at the top of the Magnificent Mile.Overlooking Lake Michigan, it was...
in July.
On May 12, 1923, Zenith Radio Company began broadcasting with the callsign WJAZ from the
Edgewater Beach HotelThe Edgewater Beach Hotel was a hotel in the far-north neighborhood community of Edgewater in Chicago, Illinois. Built in 1916 and owned by John Tobin Connery and James Patrick Connery, it was located between Sheridan Road and Lake Michigan at Berwyn Avenue. The complex had a private beach and...
. However, after this brief period, the
Tribune switched its operations to WDAP, and the Zenith station became WEBH, eventually being deleted from the license rolls on November 30, 1928.
Early programming was noted for its creativity and innovation. It included live music, political debates, comedy routines, and some of radio's first broadcasts of sporting events, including the
Indianapolis 500The Indianapolis 500-Mile Race, also known as the Indianapolis 500, the 500 Miles at Indianapolis, the Indy 500 or The 500, is an American automobile race, held annually, typically on the last weekend in May at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Speedway, Indiana...
automobileAn automobile, autocar, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor...
race, and a live broadcast of the 1925
Scopes TrialThe Scopes Trial—formally known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes and informally known as the Scopes Monkey Trial—was a landmark American legal case in 1925 in which high school science teacher, John Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act which made it unlawful to...
from
Dayton, TennesseeDayton is a city in Rhea County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 6,180 at the 2000 census. The Dayton, TN, Urban Cluster, which includes developed areas adjacent to the city and extends south to Graysville, Tennessee, had 9,050 people in 2000...
. In 1926, WGN broadcast
Sam & Henry, a daily serial with comic elements created and performed by
Freeman GosdenFreeman Fisher "Gozzie" Gosden was an American radio comedian, and pioneer in the development of the situation comedy form. He is best known for his work in the Amos 'n' Andy series.-Biography:...
and
Charles CorrellCharles James Correll was an American radio comedian, best known for his work on the Amos 'n' Andy show with Freeman S. Gosden. Correll voiced the central character of Andy Brown, along with various supporting characters. Before teaming up with Gosden, Correll worked as a stenographer and a...
. After a dispute with the station in 1927, Gosden and Correll took the program's concept and announcer Bill Hay across town to WMAQ and created the first syndicated radio show in history,
Amos 'n' AndyAmos 'n' Andy is a situation comedy set in the African-American community. It was very popular in the United States from the 1920s through the 1950s on both radio and television....
.
WGN was a founding member of the
Mutual Broadcasting SystemThe Mutual Broadcasting System was an American radio network, in operation from 1934 to 1999. In the golden age of U.S. radio drama, MBS was best known as the original network home of The Lone Ranger and The Adventures of Superman and as the long-time radio residence of The Shadow...
.
In November 1958, WGN became the first radio station in Chicago to broadcast helicopter traffic reports featuring Police Officer
Leonard BaldyLeonard Frank Baldy was a Chicago Police Department officer who became the city's first helicopter traffic reporter. His sometimes comical look at Chicago's traffic problems made him a household name. His peers gave him the nickname "Flying Officer Leonard Baldy"...
. Flying Officer Baldy was killed in a helicopter crash May 2, 1960 while on duty. Eleven years later, WGN suffered another helicopter-related tragedy. On October 10, 1971, Flying Officer Irv Hayden and his pilot were killed when their helicopter struck a utility pole in the Chicago suburb of
BellwoodBellwood is a village in Proviso Township, Cook County, Illinois, United States. The population was 20,535 at the 2000 census.There is a railroad station with commuter service to Chicago.-Geography:Bellwood is located at ....
.
Over many decades, WGN was a "
full serviceThe full service radio format consists of a wide range of programming. Mostly found on the AM band, the format can be found on a handful of FM stations...
" radio station. The station played small amounts of music during mornings and afternoons, moderate amounts of music on weekends during the day, had midday and evening talk shows, and sports among other features. The station's music was
easy listeningEasy listening is a broad style of popular music and radio format that emerged in the 1950s, evolving out of big band music, and related to MOR music as played on many AM radio stations. It encompasses the exotica, beautiful music, light music, lounge music, ambient music, and space age pop genres...
/MOR-based until the 1970s, when the music was more of an adult contemporary-type sound. The music played at the station was phased out during the 1980s, and by 1990, the station's lineup mainly consisted of talk shows.
Some former well-known personalities on the station include longtime morning hosts
Wally PhillipsWalter Phillips was an American radio personality best known for hosting WGN's morning radio show from Chicago for 21 years from January 1965 until July 1986, and was number one in the morning slot from 1968 until he left for an afternoon radio slot in 1986.Phillips was a pioneer of the radio...
,
Bob CollinsBob Collins was the morning man for WGN-720AM radio in Chicago. His show was the top rated morning show for WGN and kept the station at the top of the ratings. His show featured various conversation as well as some music...
,
Spike O'DellWilliam O'Dell a native of East Moline, Illinois, is a former radio host for WGN Radio in Chicago, Illinois. He joined WGN in 1987 and hosted the afternoon show until 2000, when he took over for the late Bob Collins in the morning slot from 5 to 9 a.m. During the time O'Dell held that slot, his...
,
Paul HarveyPaul Harvey Aurandt , better known as Paul Harvey, was an American radio broadcaster for the ABC Radio Networks. He broadcast News and Comment on weekday mornings and mid-days, and at noon on Saturdays, as well as his famous The Rest of the Story segments. His listening audience was estimated, at...
and
Roy LeonardRoy Leonard is a former American radio personality best known for hosting WGN's mid-day radio show from Chicago for 31 years and for his appearances on WGN-TV's news and Christmas specials. He also hosted Family Classics after Frazier Thomas died....
.
Orion SamuelsonOrion "The Big O" Samuelson is an American broadcaster, most widely known for hosting U.S. Farm Report. He was inducted in to the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2003.-Biography:...
has been the station's farm reporter since 1960. Late-night hosts over the years have included
Franklyn MacCormackFranklyn MacCormack was an American radio personality in Chicago, Illinois from the 1930s into the 1970s on his radio program, The All Night Showcase...
,
Chicago Ed SchwartzEd Schwartz was a Chicago media personality who hosted local late-night radio programs from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s. He was nicknamed "Chicago Ed."-Early life and education:...
, Don Vogel and the husband-and-wife team of
Steve KingSteve King is a radio personality who has been heard on several different stations, almost all in the Chicago area. For more than 25 years, King and his wife, Johnnie Putman, have hosted on "The Steve and Johnnie Show" overnights on WGN....
and Johnnie Putman.
Recent events
In 2005,
Tom LangmyerTom Langmyer , is an American broadcasting executive, author and current Vice President and General Manager of the Tribune Company's WGN Radio in Chicago, IL.-Early life:...
joined WGN as Vice President and General Manager.
On April 30, 2008, the station announced a three-year deal making WGN radio "The Voice of the
Chicago BlackhawksThe Chicago Blackhawks are a professional ice hockey team based in Chicago, Illinois. They are members of the Central Division of the Western Conference of the National Hockey League . They have won four Stanley Cup championships since their founding in 1926, most recently coming in 2009-10...
," bringing NHL hockey to the station through the 2010-2011 seasons.
In October 2008, after a ten year partnership with
The Weather ChannelThe Weather Channel is a US cable and satellite television network since May 2, 1982, that broadcasts weather forecasts and weather-related news, along with entertainment programming related to weather 24 hours a day...
to provide the station's weather forecasts, the station began to air forecasts prepared by
Tom SkillingThomas Ethelbert Skilling, III , known on-air as Tom Skilling, is a popular meteorologist in Chicago, Illinois. He is the chief meteorologist for the weekday midday, 5 and 9 p.m. newscasts at CW affiliate and national cable superstation WGN-TV .-Early beginnings:Skilling began his career in...
and other members of
WGN-TVWGN-TV, virtual channel 9 , is the CW-affiliated television station in Chicago, Illinois built, signed on, and owned by the Tribune Company. WGN-TV's studios and offices are located at 2501 W...
's weather staff.
WGN morning host, Spike O'Dell retired from radio, and WGN moved then midday host, John Williams to mornings. William's old spot, 1-4 p.m. was now vacant. WGN opted to leave that spot vacant for several months, while having other WGN hosts fill-in on a rotating basis, including weekend host
Nick DigilioNick Digilio is a movie critic and radio personality. He is the host of an award-winning radio program on WGN Radio in Chicago, and is a frequent fill-in host for WGN.-Life:...
, and Bob Sirott, who formerly hosted "The Noon Show" on the same station, in addition to a weekend program that is pre-recorded with his wife, Marianne Murciano (he also was a prominent news anchor at NBC 5 and is now at WFLD).
In March, long-time Chicago radio host,
Garry MeierGarry Meier is a Chicago-based radio personality and is currently the afternoon host on WGN-AM 720 in Chicago, heard weekdays 3-7 PM CT.- Beginnings :...
was given an audition for the 1-4 p.m. slot. Meier hosted four shows, which is believed to have caused a surge of excitement for the station among younger people, who traditionally never listened to that station. Chicago media message boards exploded with traffic and posts, many excited over a possible permanent Meier presence on the Chicago talk station. After the four Meier auditions, Jerry Springer was given four days to "guest host" as well as Rita Cosby a few weeks later.
On April 2, WGN announced that Garry Meier would now be the permanent host of the 1-4 p.m. slot, weekdays. Meier's first official show was Friday, April 2, 2009. Meier's show airs each weekday when not pre-empted by Chicago Cubs broadcasts.
On May 22, 2009, WGN announced that the Kathy and Judy Show was being canceled at the end of that day's show. The final show was largely a retrospective of the 20 years that the show was on WGN radio. This follows shortly after the replacement of much of the station's weekend lineup.
On June 15, 2009, the station announced that Greg Jarrett would be joining the station on June 22, 2009 as its new morning-drive host, with John Williams being shifted to Kathy and Judy's old time slot. In June 2010, WGN announced the hiring of longtime
CincinnatiCincinnati is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio. Cincinnati is the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located to north of the Ohio River at the Ohio-Kentucky border, near Indiana. The population within city limits is 296,943 according to the 2010 census, making it Ohio's...
-based host Mike McConnell from
WLWWLW is a clear channel talk radio station located in Cincinnati, Ohio, run by Clear Channel Communications. The station broadcasts locally on 700 kHz AM...
; he took the late morning (8:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.) slot, shifting Williams back to his original midday time slot (now from 12:30 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.) starting on August 9, 2010.
Coinciding with the hire of Jarrett for mornings, WGN dropped their "News/Talk 720" identification and began identifying itself simply as "Chicago's WGN Radio 720." This new identity was implemented in all station promos, and used by all on air talent. on Friday, Aug. 13, 2010 the station changed its identification to "News 720 WGN." In November, after the firing of controversial Program Director Kevin Metheny, station VP/GM Langmyer instructed staff to identify the station as "720 WGN." Weekend hosts Jerry Agar and the "News Junkie" Sean Wasson left the station, in exchange for more general and less controversial talk.
External links