News Operation
WGN-TV currently broadcasts a total of 49 hours of local newscasts each week (with nine hours on weekdays and two hours each on Saturdays and Sundays); in regards to the number of hours devoted to locally-produced news programming among Illinois television stations, it is the most of any station in Chicago and the state in general; in addition, the station produces Instant Replay, a 20-minute sports highlight show that airs on Sunday evenings during the 9 p.m. newscast and is hosted by longtime sports director Dan Roan. WGN-TV's newscasts are well known in the Chicago area for the longevity of its on-air news staff; many of the news anchors have worked for WGN-TV for ten years at minimum. WGN-TV is the largest television station by market size that is a WeatherBug broadcast partner, showing real-time weather conditions supplied by a network of automatic observation sites throughout the Chicago area and the United States. WGN and Fox-owned WFLD are presently the only English-language television stations in Chicago that do not broadcast their newscasts from a streetside studio (WLS-TV and WBBM produce all of their newscasts in studios located on the ground floors of downtown highrises, while WMAQ-TV produces its newscasts from both a streetside studio and its primary studios).
WGN America presently simulcasts the 12 p.m. hour of the midday newscast and the nightly 9 p.m. newscast (preemptions of the 9 p.m. newscast outside of Chicago may occur if rights issues prevent a sports telecast from being cleared for national broadcast on WGN America, and the game is scheduled to run past 9 p.m. CT). For unknown reasons, the superstation feed does not air the midday newscast's 11 a.m. hour, the weeknight 5 p.m. or weekend morning newscasts; syndication exclusivity rules on certain WGN Morning News segments reportedly caused that newscast's removal from WGN America in 1996 (as the only known incidence in which SyndEx rules resulted in a news program's preemption on cable operators outside of its primary broadcast area). Since 2008, WGN anchors reference the WGN America simulcast at the start of the noon and 9 p.m. newscasts on weekdays (except in instances when a newscast is preempted by the superstation feed).
News has played an important role on WGN-TV since the station's beginnings, due in part to its link to the Chicago Tribune. In 1980, WGN-TV debuted the first hour-long primetime newscast in the midwestern United States, when the station moved its half-hour 10 p.m. newscast one hour earlier to 9 p.m. and expanded it to an hour, retitling it from Newsnine to The Nine O'Clock News. On September 6, 1994, the station dropped children's programs airing on weekday mornings, replacing them with the then one hour-long WGN Morning News, the morning newscast gradually expanded over time to two hours in January 1996, then to three hours from 6-9 a.m. eight months later, with half-hour expansions in January 2001 (to 5:30 a.m.), January 2004 (to 5 a.m.) and August 6, 2010 (to 4:30 a.m.) until the program expanded to its current five hours (starting at 4 a.m.) on July 11, 2011 (becoming the first Chicago station and the third Tribune-owned station, after WPIX/New York City and Fox affiliate WXIN/Indianapolis, to have its morning newscast start at 4 a.m.).
WGN-TV did not have an early evening newscast until September 2008, when it debuted a half-hour program at 5:30 p.m. to compete against network evening newscasts on WBBM-TV, WMAQ-TV and WLS-TV; the midday newscast also expanded to 90 minutes with a half-hour added at 11:30 a.m. On October 5, 2009, the 5:30 p.m. newscast expanded to an hour-long program at 5 p.m. and the midday newscast expanded to two hours at 11 a.m. On July 8, 2010, starting with a WGN-TV Major League Baseball game telecast between the Chicago Cubs and the Los Angeles Dodgers, the station began airing live half-hour editions of the 9 p.m. newscast on CLTV on nights when WGN-TV telecasts a sports event scheduled to air on the station at 9 p.m. that is being held on the West Coast. This was done in order to attract non-sports viewers that normally watch the 9 p.m. newscast on channel 9 (an additional half-hour live newscast then airs following the game on WGN-TV, which is simulcast on WGN America, depending on the game's national clearance).
On October 2, 2010, the station debuted hour-long newscasts at 6 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday mornings, becoming the second Tribune station to offer newscasts on weekend mornings (WXIN debuted newscasts in that slot in August of that year); this was the first time that the station ran weekend morning newscasts since hour-long 8 a.m. newscasts previously debuted on Saturdays and Sundays in 1992 (unusual considering the weekday morning newscast would not debut for another two years); the Sunday edition was eventually cancelled in 1994, followed by the Saturday edition in 1998.
Read more about this topic: WGN-TV, Local Programming
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