''First Business'' (full name First Business News) was a nationally syndicated financial news and analysis

television program Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, e ...

, produced by First Business Network LLC, a

subsidiary A subsidiary, subsidiary company or daughter company is a company owned or controlled by another company, which is called the parent company or holding company. Two or more subsidiaries that either belong to the same parent company or having a s ...

Weigel Broadcasting Weigel Broadcasting Co. is an American television broadcasting company based in Chicago, Illinois, alongside its flagship station WCIU-TV (Channel 26), at 26 North Halsted Street in the Greektown neighborhood. It currently owns 25 television sta ...

, in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. Anchor Angela Miles, reporters Chuck Coppola and Bill Moller, and executive producer Harvey Moshman brought viewers commentary from the floors of the

Chicago Mercantile Exchange The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) (often called "the Chicago Merc", or "the Merc") is a global derivatives marketplace based in Chicago and located at 20 S. Wacker Drive. The CME was founded in 1898 as the Chicago Butter and Egg Board, an a ...

and the

Chicago Board Options Exchange The Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), located at 433 West Van Buren Street in Chicago, is the largest U.S. options exchange with an annual trading volume of around 1.27 billion at the end of 2014. CBOE offers options on over 2,200 companies ...

, as well as from their studios in the

West Loop The Near West Side, one of the 77 community areas of Chicago, is on the West Side, west of the Chicago River and adjacent to the Loop. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 started on the Near West Side. Waves of immigration shaped the history of the ...

. The program covered the financial and economic markets including

equities In finance, stock (also capital stock) consists of all the shares by which ownership of a corporation or company is divided.Longman Business English Dictionary: "stock - ''especially AmE'' one of the shares into which ownership of a company ...

futures Futures may mean: Finance *Futures contract, a tradable financial derivatives contract *Futures exchange, a financial market where futures contracts are traded * ''Futures'' (magazine), an American finance magazine Music * ''Futures'' (album), a ...

options Option or Options may refer to: Computing *Option key, a key on Apple computer keyboards *Option type, a polymorphic data type in programming languages * Command-line option, an optional parameter to a command *OPTIONS, an HTTP request method ...

commodities In economics, a commodity is an economic good, usually a resource, that has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them. The price of a comm ...

foreign exchange The foreign exchange market (Forex, FX, or currency market) is a global decentralized or over-the-counter (OTC) market for the trading of currencies. This market determines foreign exchange rates for every currency. It includes all as ...

, and

geo-political Geopolitics (from Greek γῆ ''gê'' "earth, land" and πολιτική ''politikḗ'' "politics") is the study of the effects of Earth's geography (human and physical) on politics and international relations. While geopolitics usually refers to ...

news. The program, which typically aired before local and national morning news timeslots, had been marginalized as those shows began to start earlier (as early as 4:00 a.m.), with ''First Business'' often moved to lower-rated and lower-viewed

graveyard slot A graveyard slot (or death slot) is a time period in which a television audience is very small compared to other times of the day, and therefore broadcast programming is considered far less important. Graveyard slots are usually in the early mor ...

s. The program's cancellation ended 47 years of Weigel Broadcasting and their flagship station

WCIU-TV WCIU-TV (channel 26) is a television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States, affiliated with The CW. It is the flagship television property of locally based Weigel Broadcasting, which has owned the station since its inception, and is siste ...

(channel 26) carrying and originating business-focused programming from Chicago.

Syndication

As of the fall 2011 season, the program was carried daily on more than 100 US broadcast stations and in outlets across 46 foreign countries, with affiliates across all the major networks, as well as independent stations. Air times varied, though the timeslots for the show in the majority of markets was 4:00am through 7:00am leading into early morning national newscasts or local morning newscasts. The only requirement the show enforced was that the program must air before the

NYSE The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District, Manhattan, Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the List of stock exchanges, world's largest s ...

opening bell at 9:30am ET (except for Alaska or Hawaii, where time zones necessitated a post-opening bell airing). The show was syndicated by Weigel Broadcasting and sold by Edward. E. Finch & Company.

History

The ''First Business'' program was originally launched in 1989 by BizNet, the broadcast division of the

United States Chamber of Commerce The United States Chamber of Commerce (USCC) is the largest lobbying group in the United States, representing over three million businesses and organizations. The group was founded in April 1912 out of local chambers of commerce at the urging ...

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

From its inception through its BizNet years with the Chamber, the First Business program production team was led by BizNet News Director Densil Allen. The production of First Business was later taken over from BizNet by CONUS Communications, a joint venture of

Viacom Viacom, an abbreviation of Video and Audio Communications, may refer to: * Viacom (1952–2006), a former American media conglomerate * Viacom (2005–2019), a former company spun off from the original Viacom * Viacom18, a joint venture between Par ...

and

Hubbard Broadcasting Hubbard Broadcasting, Inc. is an American television and radio broadcasting corporation based in St. Paul, Minnesota. It was founded by Stanley E. Hubbard. The corporation has broadcast outlets scattered across Minnesota, Wisconsin, Missouri, ...

also responsible for

All News Channel All News Channel (ANC) was an American satellite television news channel that was owned by CONUS Communications, a joint venture between Viacom and Hubbard Broadcasting. The channel was carried mainly on direct-broadcast satellite provider D ...

, who would produce the program until 2003. Barton Eckert hosted the program from CONUS' bureau in Washington, with his anchor segments being fed via satellite to Hubbard in

St. Paul, Minnesota Saint Paul (abbreviated St. Paul) is the capital of the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Ramsey County. Situated on high bluffs overlooking a bend in the Mississippi River, Saint Paul is a regional business hub and the center o ...

, where news packages acquired from CONUS' local member stations nationwide and other sources would be inserted into the program along with Eckert's anchor segments fed in from Washington, with the finished program being delivered via satellite to local stations from St. Paul very weekday. During this era, the program also aired weekday mornings at 6:30 AM on the

USA Network USA Network (simply USA) is an American basic cable television channel owned by the NBCUniversal Television and Streaming division of Comcast's NBCUniversal through NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment. It was originally launched in 1977 as Madison ...

; at the time CONUS produced short ''USA Update'' news briefs for the network. In 2003,

took over the program and moved the show to Chicago. With the loss of affiliates for the show as stations began to expand local morning news and force it into a

, Weigel decided to shut down the program. Its last edition was produced before the Christmas break, on December 22, 2014. Former host Angela Miles now hosts and produces the identically formatted ''Business First AM'', which airs in a similar time slot and shares many of its same Chicago-based contributors.

Notable former on-air staff

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by the M ...

Nicole Lapin Nicole Lapin (born March 7, 1984) is an American television news anchor, author and businesswoman. She is known for being an American news anchor on CNBC, CNN and Bloomberg. Lapin also served as a finance correspondent for ''Morning Joe'' on MSNB ...

Stephanie Elam Stephanie Elam (born January 23, 1974) is an American television journalist. Early life and education Elam was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area along with her five other siblings. She grew up in Saratoga, California and attended Saratoga H ...

** Claire Leka

References

External links

Syndication

History

Notable former on-air staff

See also

References

External links