18 Facts About WGN-TV

WGN-TV is an independent television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States.

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.

WGN-TV had telecast performances of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, beginning in 1953, during Fritz Reiner's tenure as the orchestra's music director.

WGN-TV became more reliant on sports programming, led by its broadcasts of Chicago Cubs baseball games as well as other regional collegiate and professional teams.

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 .

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WGN-TV gained its third television and second radio station in 1960, when it purchased KDAL-TV and KDAL in Duluth, Minnesota from the estate of the late Dalton LeMasurier ; the company would later purchase KCTO in Denver from J Elroy McCaw in 1966.

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.

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.

WGN-TV—which continued to carry the network locally—began clearing the entire WB network schedule in September 2004, when it assumed the rights to the Kids' WB lineup from WCIU-TV, effectively becoming the sole remaining station in the Chicago market to run cartoons on weekday afternoons.

WGN-TV gradually evolved its programming slate during the late 2000s and 2010s, adopting a news-intensive format, and shifting its weekday daytime lineup towards mainly first-run talk and game shows during the daytime hours; as fewer film packages were offered on the syndication market, its weekend schedule began relying less on feature films and shifted to incorporate local lifestyle and tourism programs as well as additional first-run and off-network syndicated shows.

However, WGN-TV continues to maintain a content partnership with the Tribune.

WGN-TV would regain national availability in the spring of 2015, when Channel Master included the Chicago feed among the initial offerings of its LinearTV over-the-top streaming service.

The WB and The CW each contractually limited the number of network program preemptions, other than those caused by long-form breaking news coverage, that could occur on an annual basis; in compliance with these restrictions, WGN-TV purchased airtime on CLTV, WCIU-TV and WPWR-TV to carry certain game telecasts that the station was contracted to produce .

WGN-TV currently produces the following programs, some of which were previously rebroadcast on CLTV:.

Local events that WGN-TV aired in previous years have included the Bud Billiken Parade .

WGN-TV served as the originating station for the Illinois Lottery beginning at its July 1974 inception.

WGN-TV was the first Chicago television station to televise a local appearance by a U S President and provided mobile coverage of Gen.

In July 1996, WGN-TV began using a Eurocopter AS350 B2 helicopter for newsgathering, "Skycam 9, " which is used for certain breaking news events and traffic reporting.