13 Facts About WGN America

WGN America was an American subscription television network that was owned by the Nexstar Media Group, and was the company's only wholly owned, national cable-originated television channel.

The channel in its final form under the WGN America branding ran a mixture of entertainment programming for most of the broadcast day and a straight-news format—via a daily national prime time newscast, NewsNation—during the evening and early overnight hours.

WGN America-TV became most associated with its heavy schedule of sporting events, which, in addition to its signature Cubs telecasts, included Chicago White Sox baseball, Chicago Bulls basketball, Chicago Blackhawks hockey, and college football and basketball games from individual regional universities as well as Big Ten Conference schools, among other events in aired at various points over the years.

For similar reasons to those that necessitated the decision to remove WB programming from the channel, WGN America did not carry any programming from The CW when WGN-TV became its Chicago charter affiliate when that network launched in September 2006, due to the fact that The CW is widely available throughout the United States via over-the-air broadcast stations and affiliations with digital subchannels and local cable outlets when that network launched in September 2006.

Plans called for WGN America to incorporate scripted original programming, to migrate from "limited basic" programming tiers to the "expanded basic" tiers of cable and other wired multichannel television providers, and forego its longstanding royalty payment structure to adopt a retransmission consent model in future carriage agreements in which Tribune would receive subscriber-based fees from its multichannel television distributors for carriage of the network.

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However, in 2013, WGN America began to acquire exclusive cable rights to programs eligible for syndication as part of the channel's shift towards operating as a conventional cable network.

Between 2006 and 2009, WGN America ran teen- and preteen-oriented sitcoms during mid-afternoon timeslots such as Lizzie McGuire, Even Stevens and Sister, Sister, only for these shows to quickly be moved to overnight graveyard slots and then removed from the channel entirely shortly afterward.

WGN America aired other Chicago-based programs produced by WGN's local programming department via simulcast or on a delayed basis, such as local parades, event coverage and retrospective shows on WGN-TV's past, including the McDonald's Thanksgiving Parade, the Chicago St Patrick's Day Parade, the Chicago Auto Show, the Bud Billiken Parade and Bozo, Gar and Ray: WGN TV Classics .

WGN America formerly aired live Illinois Lottery drawing results, making it the only U S state lottery which had their drawings—including multi-jurisdictional games—televised nationally.

WGN America effectively acted as the default drawing broadcaster for Mega Millions—beginning with its September 1996 inception as The Big Game—and Powerball—beginning when Illinois became a participant in January 2010—in areas of lottery-participating states where neither multi-state lottery had their drawings televised by a local station.

WGN America is available on most multichannel television providers within the United States.

Since its conversion from a superstation, WGN America was targeted in Tribune Media's retransmission consent negotiations with cable and satellite providers as an extraneous asset providers would like to pay less for, noting that most of the channel's programming at the time was syndicated to other broadcast and cable-originated networks.

However, most providers across Canada – including some that lost access to WGN America – continue to receive WGN-TV, as the station is still authorized for domestic distribution as a superstation.