WGN (AM)

WGN (AM)

WGN (720 AM) is a radio station in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It is the only radio station owned by the Tribune Company, which also owns the flagship television station WGN 9, the Chicago Tribune newspaper and Chicago magazine locally. WGN's transmitter is located in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. The station has a news-talk format and is the flagship station of Chicago Cubs baseball, Chicago Blackhawks hockey, Northwestern University football and men's basketball, and was the longtime Chicago outlet for Paul Harvey 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 Santo in December 2010, he and Pat Hughes served as the play-by-play team for all games of the Chicago Cubs, and the broadcasts were known as the Pat and Ron Show.

WGN is a high-powered clear channel AM station (50,000 watts), which during nighttime hours is often audible over much of the USA, parts of Canada, and sometimes as far away as Australia, Europe and South America. The station also has a 24/7 Internet stream on its website, which carries the station's broadcast programming except for commercial breaks and Cubs games, when public service announcements, station promotions, host-read commercials and alternate programming, is played instead.

WGN is responsible for activation of the Chicago metropolitan area Emergency Alert System when hazardous weather alerts, disaster area declarations, and child abductions are issued.

WGN is one of the rare news/talk radio stations in the country that broadcasts all local talk shows. It is the only all local talk station in Chicago, with WIND, WCPT, and WLS all airing at least one national talk show. The call letters WGN originally referred to the Tribune - "World's Greatest Newspaper" following the pattern of other stations such as WLS (World's Largest Store for Sears and WSM in Nashville for "We Shield Millions" - the slogan of the insurance company that owned the station.)