WGN News At Nine

WGN-TV (channel 9) is an independent television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Owned by Nexstar Media Group, it is sister to the company's sole radio property, news/talk/ sports station WGN (720 AM). WGN-TV's studios are located on West Bradley Place in Chicago's North Center community; as such, it is the only major commercial television station in Chicago which bases its main studio outside the Loop. Its transmitter is located atop the Willis Tower in the Loop.

Like concept progenitor WTBS in Atlanta, WGN-TV was a pioneering superstation; on November 8, 1978, it became the second U.S. television station to be made available via satellite transmission to cable and direct-broadcast satellite subscribers nationwide. Later renamed WGN America, the former superstation feed was converted into a conventional basic cable network in December 2014, enabling it to be added to local cable providers, and later soft re-launched as NewsNation in September 2020. A charter affiliate of both The WB and of successor network The CW, WGN-TV reverted to being an independent station in 2016.

WGN-TV, WGN radio and the now-defunct regional cable news channel Chicagoland Television (CLTV) were the three flagship properties of Tribune Broadcasting, itself part of the Tribune Media conglomerate (formerly known as the Tribune Company until August 2014), until the company's purchase by Nexstar was completed in September 2019.

History

Early years (1948–1956)

The Chicago Tribune Company, headed by '' Chicago Tribune'' editor and publisher Robert R. McCormick and the owner of WGN and WGNB submitted an application to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on September 13, 1946, and under the "WGN Incorporated" subsidiary, to build a television station on VHF channel 9. After the FCC awarded the permit on November 8, the group originally requested to assign WGNA as the station's call sign. By January 1948, however, the company decided to call its new television property WGN-TV after WGN, which had been owned by the ''Tribune'' since 1924. The three-letter base call sign served as an initialism for "World's Greatest Newspaper", a tagline and slogan used by the ''Tribune'' since 1909.

WGN-TV began test broadcasts on February 1, 1948, then informally signed on the air on March 6 to broadcast the 1948 Golden Gloves boxing finals from the Chicago Stadium. Regular programming commenced on April 5, 1948, at 7:45 p.m. with a two-hour-long special, ''WGN-TV Salute to Chicago''. Originating from WGN Radio's studios at the Tribune Tower's Centennial Building annex in the Magnificent Mile district, the inaugural broadcast included dedicatory speeches from McCormick, Chicago Mayor Martin Kennelly, U.S. Senator Charles W. Brooks and Governor Dwight Green. Performances were led by, among others, musician Dick "Two Ton" Baker, comedian George Gobel, and bandleader Robert Trendler and the WGN Orchestra (WGN's in-house band). Afterwards, a film previewed WGN-TV's initial program offerings. At the time it signed on, there were only 1,700 operational television sets in Chicago; that number would jump dramatically to around 100,000 sets by April 1949.

WGN-TV was the second commercial television station in both Chicago and Illinois to sign on, as WBKB (channel 4) launched on September 6, 1946, but had operated on an experimental basis since 1940 as W9XBK. Two other stations joined WBKB and WGN-TV later in 1948: ABC's WENR-TV (channel 7) on September 17 and NBC's WNBQ (channel 5) on October 8. The ''Tribune'' quickly followed up WGN-TV's launch with WPIX in New York City on June 15, 1948. Initially, WGN television and radio operated from the Chicago Daily News Building on West Madison and North Canal Streets, occupying space previously used by WMAQ radio from 1929 until relocating to the Merchandise Mart in 1935; WGN-TV also based its transmission tower atop the building. Originally broadcasting for 6½ hours per day from 2:00 to 6:00 p.m. and from 7:30 to 10:00 p.m. seven days a week, Channel 9 started out as an independent station, then began carrying programming from DuMont on September 26, 1948, and also CBS on December 1.

On January 11, 1949, WGN-TV—along with WNBQ and WENR-TV—began transmitting network programming over a live coaxial feed originating from New York City; this allowed Channel 9 to be able to carry a regular schedule of CBS and DuMont programs that could be transmitted as they aired in the Eastern Time Zone. WBKB-TV assumed primary rights to CBS programming on September 5, 1949; as such, WGN began dropping many CBS shows from its schedule but continued to carry certain network programs that channel 4 declined to broadcast (eventually being reduced strictly to CBS's weekday morning soap opera block by 1952). During its tenure with DuMont, WGN-TV became one of that network's strongest affiliates, as well as one of its major production centers. Several DuMont programs were produced from the station's facilities during the late 1940s and the first half of the 1950s, including '' The Al Morgan Show'', ''Chicago Symphony'', '' Chicagoland Mystery Players'', ''Music From Chicago'', '' The Music Show'', '' They Stand Accused'' (the first televised courtroom drama program), ''This is Music'', ''Windy City Jamboree'' and ''Down You Go''. WGN-TV had also telecast performances of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, beginning in 1953, during Fritz Reiner's tenure as the orchestra's music director.

On January 25, 1950, the WGN stations relocated their operations to the Centennial Building. Renovated to accommodate production and office facilities for WGN-TV, the facility included one master (which was situated on inflated rubber bags to eliminate outside noise and vibrations) and two auxiliary studios as well as a sub-basement studio situated below street level that could allow WGN-TV-AM and WGNB to continue broadcasts in the event of an atom bomb attack on Chicago. As part of United Paramount Theatres (UPT)'s merger with ABC, on February 6, 1953, CBS assumed ownership of WBKB-TV through a $6.75-million acquisition designed to allow UPT to acquire ABC-owned WENR-TV (which subsequently assumed the WBKB call letters and management staff that previously belonged to channel 4), in compliance with FCC regulations that then forbade common ownership of two television stations within the same market. As a consequence of the deal, CBS moved the remainder of its programming to the rechristened WBBM-TV on April 1; this left Channel 9 exclusively affiliated with the faltering DuMont. (WBBM would move from VHF channel 4 to VHF channel 2 on July 5, 1953, in accordance with allocation realignments dictated by the FCC-issued ''Sixth Report and Order''.) By 1954, WGN-TV expanded its broadcast schedule to 18 hours per day (running from 6:00 a.m. to 12:00 a.m.).

After McCormick succumbed from pneumonia-related complications on April 1, 1955, ownership of WGN-TV-AM, the ''Chicago Tribune'' and the News Syndicate Company properties would transfer to the McCormick-Patterson Trust, assigned to the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation in the names of the non-familial heirs of McCormick (whose two marriages never produced any children) and familial heirs of Patterson. (The trust was dissolved in January 1975, with a majority of the trust's former beneficiaries, including descendants of the McCormick and Patterson families, owning stock in the restructured Tribune Company entity—which assumed oversight of all properties previously overseen by the trust—afterward.)

Independence (1956–1995)

The station disaffiliated from DuMont when the network ceased operations on August 6, 1956, amid various issues stemming from its relations with Paramount Pictures that hamstrung DuMont from expansion. Because the three remaining commercial broadcast networks (ABC, NBC and CBS) had each owned television stations in Chicago by this time, WGN-TV became an independent station by default. Under executive vice president and general manager Ward L. Quaal (whose stewardship of the station and programming efforts earned him the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences ATASs Governors' Award in 1966 and 1987), the station adopted a general entertainment format that would become typical of other major market independents up through the early 1990s, carrying a mix of sitcoms and drama series, feature films, cartoons and religious programs as well as locally produced news, public affairs, music and children's programs. WGN-TV also became more reliant on sports programming, led by its broadcasts of Chicago Cubs baseball games as well as other regional collegiate and professional teams. This helped Channel 9 establish itself as a programming alternative to the market's three network-owned stations and as the market's leading independent for much of the next 39 years. After initial struggles due to its carriage of programs that could not accrue viewership sufficient to attract national advertisers, WGN began turning profitable by October 1957. On January 15, 1956, the station moved its transmitter facilities to a antenna on the roof of the Prudential Building on East Randolph Street and Michigan Avenue, and increased its effective radiated power from 120 kW to the maximum of 316 kW.

In March 1957, WGN began carrying programming from the NTA Film Network; the station served as the programming service's primary Chicago affiliate, offering the majority of NTA's program offerings. (The remaining, limited number of NTA shows not carried by WGN were split between ABC-owned WBKB-TV and NBC-owned WNBQ.) This relationship lasted until National Telefilm Associates discontinued the service in November 1961. On November 8, 1957, after conducting internal tests since the fall of 1956, WGN-TV—which had ordered RCA color television equipment in the fall of 1952—began broadcasting select programs in color, consisting primarily of syndicated programs available in the format. In January 1958, WGN became the second Chicago television station (after WNBQ, which began televising programs in the format in January 1954) to begin transmitting local programming in color; along with other color telecasting upgrades to its production and master control facilities, WGN was also the first television station in the world to use equipment (provided by Ampex) capable of videotape recording and playback of color telecasts. The first live program on the station to be broadcast in the format was '' Ding Dong School'', a music-focused children's program hosted by Jackie Van (which WGN picked up in 1957, following its cancellation by WNBQ). In 1958, WGN-TV earned a Peabody Award—the only local television station to earn the accolade—for its short-lived children's program ''The Blue Fairy'' (which was hosted by Brigid Bazlen in the title role, and, along with ''Garfield Goose and Friends'', was one of the first two children's programs produced by the station to be broadcast in color).

On June 27, 1961, the operations of WGN-TV and WGN radio were relocated to the WGN Mid-America Broadcast Center (later renamed the WGN Continental Broadcast Center and now simply referred to as WGN Studios), a two-story, complex on West Bradley Place in Chicago's North Center community. The Broadcast Center, which began housing some local program production on January 16 of that year, was developed for color broadcasting—allowing the station to televise live studio shows as well as Chicago Cubs and White Sox baseball games in the format—and with civil defense concerns in mind to provide a safe location to conduct broadcasts in the event of a hostile attack (such as a bombing by a nuclear weapon) targeting downtown Chicago. It houses three main production soundstages as well as two additional soundstages that were originally used as sound recording studios for WGN Radio. The Tribune Company repurposed the former Centennial Building facility for the '' Chicago American'' (retitled ''Chicago Today'' in 1969), where the newspaper maintained office and publishing operations until it ceased publication in 1974; the space is occupied by a Dylan's Candy Bar location. An adjacent , single-story building that housed certain non-production-related operations for the WGN stations was annexed into the facility (expanding the complex to ) in 1966.

In subsequent years, the Tribune Company gradually expanded its broadcasting unit, of which WGN-TV-AM served as its flagship stations, a tie forged in January 1966, when the subsidiary (sans the WPIX television and radio stations, which continued to be controlled by the Tribune-managed News Syndicate Co. before being fully integrated into the company's main station group following its 1991 sale of the ''Daily News'') was renamed the WGN Continental Broadcasting Company. In 1964, the company started Mid-America Video Tape Productions, which had eventually become WGN Continental Productions (later Tribune Entertainment). The group became known as the Tribune Broadcasting Company in January 1981, but retained the WGN Continental moniker as its ''de facto'' business name until 1984 and as the licensee for WGN-TV and WGN Radio thereafter. The company gained its third television and second radio station in 1960, when it purchased KDAL-TV (now KDLH) and KDAL in Duluth, Minnesota from the estate of the late Dalton LeMasurier (Tribune sold KDAL-TV in 1978 and KDAL radio in 1981); the company would later purchase KCTO (subsequently re-called KWGN-TV) in Denver from J. Elroy McCaw in 1966. Tribune's later television purchases included those of WANX-TV (subsequently re-called WGNX, now WANF) in Atlanta (in 1983); KTLA in Los Angeles (in 1985); WPHL-TV in Philadelphia (in 1992); WLVI-TV in Boston (owned from 1994 to 2006); KHTV (now KIAH) in Houston (in 1995); KTTY (now KSWB-TV) in San Diego (in 1996); KCPQ and KTWB-TV (now KZJO) in Seattle (in 1998 and 1999, respectively); and WBDC-TV (now WDCW) in Washington, D.C. (in 1999). Six other stations—including KDAF in Dallas–Fort Worth and WDZL (now WSFL-TV) in Miami—were added through its purchase of Renaissance Broadcasting in July 1996, and two more were added through its November 1999 acquisition of the Quincy Jones- and Tribune-owned consortium Qwest Broadcasting (forcing the sale of WGNX to the Meredith Corporation in order to acquire Qwest's Atlanta property, WATL). Finally in December 2013, Tribune purchased Local TV's 19 television stations, giving WGN new sister stations in nearby markets—ABC affiliate WQAD-TV in Davenport, Iowa (serving the Quad Cities region that encompasses parts of northwestern Illinois and southeastern Iowa) and Fox affiliate WITI in Milwaukee—all three of which had pooled their local news reports as part of an existing content and broadcast management agreement formed between Local TV and Tribune in 2008.

WGN-TV was Chicago's leading independent station during the 1960s and into the 1970s, even as it gained its first four competitors on UHF, one of which would not last more than a year. Locally based Weigel Broadcasting signed on WCIU-TV (channel 26) on February 6, 1964, with a multi-ethnic programming format. On January 4, 1966, New Television Chicago—a joint venture between Field Communications (which, through parent Field Enterprises, was a sister property to the ''Tribune''s main newspaper rivals, the '' Chicago Sun-Times'' and the '' Chicago Daily News'', at the time) and local advertising firm Froelich & Friedland—signed on WFLD (channel 32, now a Fox owned-and-operated station), which would grow to become WGN's strongest independent competitor in the area. On May 18, 1969, Aurora-based WLXT-TV (channel 60) signed on with a mix of sporting events and a limited schedule of syndicated programs and local newscasts, operating part-time on weekday evenings and on weekends. (WLXT would cease operations on July 17, 1970.) A fourth competitor arrived on April 5, 1970, when Essaness Television Corporation signed on WSNS-TV (channel 44, now a Telemundo owned-and-operated station). WFLD and WSNS went head to head for supremacy as Chicago's second strongest independent station, and were the only independents in the market besides WGN that were able to turn a reasonable profit; in contrast, WCIU and all of the other competitors that came afterward lagged behind in terms of both ratings and revenue. (WSNS would bow out of the competition in 1982, when, after two years of carrying the over-the-air subscription service only at night on weekdays and for most of the daytime and evening hours on weekends, it converted into a full-time outlet of ONTV.) WGN-TV served as the Chicago affiliate of the United Network for its one month of existence from May to June 1967, when financial issues forced the shuttering of the fledgling network.

In May 1969, the station relocated its transmitter facilities to the -tall west antenna tower of the John Hancock Center on North Michigan Avenue. The original Prudential Building transmitter remained in use as an auxiliary facility until the transmitter dish was disassembled in 1984. WGN also served as a charter member of the Operation Prime Time syndication service, which was launched in 1976 as a consortium founded by Al Masini and a committee of executives with 18 independent stations (including WGN-TV, which was represented by then-station manager and WGN Continental Broadcasting Vice President Sheldon Cooper) represented by Masini's advertising sales firm TeleRep, offering a mix of miniseries as well as first-run syndicated programs that would be featured on the partner stations (including '' Solid Gold'', '' Star Search'' and '' Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous'', all of which aired on Channel 9 during the 1980s and early 1990s).

Movies became a more integral part of WGN's schedule during the late 1970s and early 1980s. During this period, depending on whether sports events or specials were scheduled, Channel 9 usually aired four daily features—one in the morning, and two to three films per night—Monday through Friday, and between three and six films per day on Saturdays and Sundays. Among its regular film showcases were ''WGN elevisionPresents'' (which aired during the late access slot weeknights from 1948 to 1995, on Saturdays until 1979 and on Sundays until 1997) and ''Action Theater'' (a showcase of action and adventure films that ran on midday Sundays from 1952 to 1956 and, later, in Saturday late access from 1979 to 2001). In February 1977, the station also began carrying a nightly prime time feature at 8:00 p.m., replacing syndicated dramas that had been airing in the timeslot. (The prime time films were pushed to 7:00 p.m. in March 1980, in accordance with the shift of its late-evening newscast into prime time). By January 1980, when WGN became the market's second television station to offer a 24-hour schedule (after WBBM-TV, which adopted such a schedule in 1976), the station began to regularly feature an overnight presentation of older black-and-white and some more recent theatrical and made-for-TV movies at 1:00 a.m. (later 3:00 a.m. by September 1983), along with a few recent first-run syndicated and older off-network syndicated programs.

Expansion into a national superstation (1978–1995)

WGN-TV began to extend its reach outside of the Chicago area beginning in the mid-1970s, when its signal began to be transmitted via microwave relay to cable television providers in areas of the central Midwestern United States that lacked access to an entertainment-based independent station. By the fall of 1978, the Channel 9 signal was transmitted to 574 cable systems—covering most of Western, Central and Southern Illinois as well as large swaths of Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri and Michigan—reaching an estimated 8.6 million subscribers. On November 9, 1978, Tulsa, Oklahoma-based satellite carrier United Video Inc. uplinked the WGN-TV signal to a Satcom-3 transponder for distribution to cable and C-band satellite subscribers throughout the United States. (United Video uplinked the station's signal without WGN Continental Broadcasting's consent, using a legal exemption in the 1976 Copyright Act's compulsory license statute allowing "passive" carriers to retransmit broadcast signals without first seeking the licensee's express permission). This resulted in WGN-TV joining the ranks of Atlanta independent station WTCG (later WTBS and now WPCH-TV) to become America's second national "superstation," independent stations distributed via satellite to cable providers within their respective regions, or throughout the country.

Within a week of attaining national status, WGN-TV added approximately 200 cable systems in various parts of the United States (reaching an estimated one million subscribers) to its total distribution. That cable reach would grow over the next several years: the first heaviest concentrations of availability outside the Midwest developed in the Central U.S. (where WGN's telecasts of Chicago Cubs baseball, Chicago Bulls basketball and ''The Bozo Show'' became highly popular) and gradually expanded to encompass most of the nation. Tribune and station management treated WGN-TV as a "passive" superstation, asserting a neutral position over United Video relaying its signal to a national audience and leaving United to handle national promotion of the WGN signal, instead of handling those responsibilities directly; this allowed the station to continue paying for syndicated programming and advertising at local rates rather than those comparable to other national networks. (Until Tribune began relaying the Chicago feed to the firm directly in 1985, the company was also not compensated directly by United Video for their retransmission or promotion of WGN's signal; Tribune, however, received royalties from cable systems for programs to which it held the copyright.) As such, WGN-TV became the first Tribune-owned independent station to be distributed to a national pay television audience (United Video would later uplink WPIX in May 1984, Netlink began distributing KWGN-TV in October 1987 and Eastern Microwave Inc. began distributing KTLA in February 1988) and the first superstation to be distributed by United Video (with WGN and WPIX being joined by Gaylord Broadcasting-owned KTVT ow a CBS owned-and-operated stationin Dallas–Fort Worth in July 1984 and, after it assumed retransmission rights from Eastern Microwave, KTLA in April 1988). For about eleven years afterward, the WGN-TV satellite signal carried the same programming shown within the Chicago market.

As it gained national exposure, Channel 9 underestimated WFLD's ability to acquire top-rated, off-network syndicated programs. WFLD's respective owners during this timeframe—Field Communications and Metromedia, the latter of which acquired WFLD in 1982 as part of Field and partner company Kaiser Broadcasting's concurring exits from the television industry—were particularly aggressive in their programming acquisitions as they leveraged their independent stations in other major and mid-sized markets for the strongest programs among those entering into syndication. Channel 32 began strengthening its syndication slate in the fall of 1979, when it acquired the local rights to off-network series such as '' M*A*S*H'', '' Happy Days'' and '' All in the Family'', which helped it edge ahead of WGN-TV in the ratings by the end of that year. Not to stay outdone, after Tribune appointed Robert King to replace Sheldon Cooper (who was promoted to president and CEO of the upstart Tribune Entertainment syndication unit) as the station's general manager in 1982, WGN-TV began making its own efforts to acquire stronger first-run and off-network syndicated programs, gaining the rights to series such as ''Laverne & Shirley'', ''Good Times'', '' Little House on the Prairie'' and '' WKRP in Cincinnati''. WGN's ratings improved throughout the 1980s under the stewardship of King and his successor, Dennis FitzSimons (who would later elevate to President of Tribune Broadcasting, and later to Executive Vice President and then Chairman/CEO of the Tribune Company before stepping down in 2007), firmly overtaking WFLD to again become the market's top-rated independent by the end of the decade.

WGN-TV would gain two additional UHF independent competitors over the course of eight months in the early 1980s. On September 18, 1981, Focus Broadcasting signed on Joliet-based WFBN (channel 66, now WGBO-DT), initially running a mix of local public-access programs during the daytime hours and the Spectrum subscription service at night. Then on April 4, 1982, a shared operation over UHF channel 60 launched, involving Metrowest Corporation-owned English-language outlet WPWR-TV (which primarily carried the sports-centered pay service Sportsvision) and HATCO-60-owned Spanish-language outlet WBBS-TV (now UniMás owned-and-operated station WXFT-DT). (WBBS took over channel 60 full-time after WPWR moved to channel 50 in January 1987, as a byproduct of Metrowest's 1986 buyout of HATCO-60's share of the license and subsequent sale of the allocation to the Home Shopping Network.) WGN and WFLD remained the market's strongest independent stations as they both had more robust programming inventories than their competitors.

In August 1983, WGN-TV unveiled one of the most successful station image campaigns in the United States with the launch of the "Chicago's Very Own" campaign. (The slogan—to which the station holds the trademark rights and by WGN—is a variant of the "Chicago's Own" tagline that had been used in on-air identifications periodically since the 1960s.) Developed by Peter Marino (WGN-TV's director of promotions at the time) and Mike Waterkotte (then the creative director of now-defunct Chicago advertising agency Eisaman, Johns & Law), the campaign promotions focused on the city's people and cultural heritage as well as WGN-TV's local programming efforts, and were accompanied by an imaging theme performed by legendary R&B singer and Chicago native Lou Rawls. The seven-note musical signature of the image theme was also incorporated into two associated music packages that were used for the station's newscasts and identifications between 1984 and 1993, while the slogan has served as the title for two other news themes commissioned exclusively for WGN-TV in subsequent years (a John Hegner-composed package used from 1993 to 1997 and a 615 Music-composed package that has been used since November 1, 2007) as well as for a weekly profile series that aired from 1988 until 1990 and would evolve into a continuing weekly 9:00 p.m. news segment. At various points over the years, the " ity/regions Very Own" slogan was also adapted by some of its Tribune-owned sister stations (such as WPIX, KTLA and WTTV in Indianapolis). On November 10, 1984, WGN-TV became an affiliate of the MGM/UA Premiere Network ad hoc syndicated film service.

On November 22, 1987, during that evening's edition of ''The Nine O'Clock News'', the WGN-TV signal was briefly overridden by video of an unidentified person wearing a Max Headroom mask and sunglasses in front of a sheet of corrugated metal imitating the moving electronic background effect used in the character's TV and movie appearances. However, oscillating audio interference obscured the audio portion throughout the 13-second video excerpt; WGN engineers were able to successfully restore the signal by changing the frequency of its Hancock Center studio transmitter link to override the pirated feed. The extended video, as seen during the roughly 90-second-long hijack occurring later that night during a ''Doctor Who'' episode on PBS member station WTTW (channel 11), featured several references to WGN-TV (including the masked person mocking fill-in sports anchor and WGN Radio sports commentator Chuck Swirsky as a "frickin' nerd" and a "frickin' liberal," and referring to his pretend defecation as a "masterpiece for all the greatest world newspaper nerds," paraphrasing the WGN callsign's meaning). Bemused, sports anchor Dan Roan—who was presenting highlights of that afternoon's home game between the Chicago Bears and the Detroit Lions (which the Bears won, 30–10) when the initial hijack took place at 9:14 p.m.—commented, "Well, if you're wondering what happened, so am I," and joked that the master control computer "took off and went wild". (The perpetrators of the WGN and WTTW intrusions have never been caught or identified.)

On May 18, 1988, the FCC reinstituted the Syndication Exclusivity Rights Rule ("SyndEx"), a rule—previously repealed by the agency in July 1980—that allows television stations to claim local exclusivity over syndicated programs and requires cable systems to either black out or secure an agreement with the claimant station or a syndication distributor to continue carrying a claimed program through an out-of-market station. To indemnify cable systems from potential blackouts, when the rules went into effect on January 1, 1990, a separate national feed of WGN that featured programs which Tribune and United Video secured for national carriage—consisting of local and some syndicated programs as well as sporting events—except those subjected to league restrictions pertaining to the number of games that could be shown on out-of-market stations annually—that aired on the WGN Chicago signal, and substitute programs not subjected to exclusivity claims—was launched. (The feed was originally structured similarly to the concurrently launched WWOR EMI Service feed of Secaucus, New Jersey