Talk:WGN-TV/Temp

Untitled
WGN-TV, virtual channel 9 (UHF digital channel 19), is an independent television station licensed to Chicago, Illinois, United States. It serves as the flagship television property of the Tribune Broadcasting subsidiary of Tribune Media and is one of the company's three flagship media properties, alongside news-talk/sports radio station WGN (720 AM) and local cable news channel Chicagoland Television (CLTV). The station's second and third digital subchannels respectively serve as owned-and-operated stations of Tribune's two national over-the-air multicast services, classic television network Antenna TV and movie-focused general entertainment network This TV (the latter being a joint venture with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer).

WGN-TV maintains studio facilities and offices at 2501 West Bradley Place – between North Campbell and North Talman Avenues, near the Lane Tech High School campus – 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 downtown business district); its transmitter is located atop the Willis Tower on South Wacker Drive in the Chicago Loop. On cable, WGN-TV is available locally on Comcast Xfinity channels 9 (SD) and 192 (HD), WOW! channels 9 (SD) and 206 (HD), RCN channels 9 (SD) and 609 (HD), and AT&T U-verse channels 9 (SD) and 1009 (HD).

Along with concept progenitor WTBS in Atlanta, WGN-TV was a pioneering superstation, becoming the second U.S. television station to be made available via satellite transmission to cable and direct-broadcast satellite subscribers nationwide on November 8, 1978. The former "superstation" feed, WGN America, was converted by Tribune into a conventional basic cable network in December 2014, at which time it removed all WGN-TV-produced local programs from its schedule and began to be carried on cable providers within the Chicago market (including Xfinity, AT&T U-verse, WOW! and RCN) alongside its existing local carriage on satellite providers DirecTV and Dish Network. Although the Chicago station is no longer available within the United States on conventional pay television providers outside of its home market, WGN-TV continues to be available domestically via Channel Master's LinearTV service and as a de facto superstation on most Canadian cable and satellite providers.

Early years (1948–1956)
On September 13, 1946, WGN Incorporated – a subsidiary of the Chicago Tribune Company, headed at the time by Robert R. McCormick, editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune and owner of local radio stations WGN (720 AM) and WGNB (98.7 FM; frequency now occupied by WFMT) – submitted an application to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a construction permit to build and license to operate a television station on VHF channel 9. (WGN representatives had to amend the application to use channel 9 after realizing that the initial application listed VHF channel 4, which had already been assigned to Balaban and Katz Broadcasting for the fledgling WBKB-TV, as the allocation for the proposed station.) After the FCC awarded the permit to WGN Inc. on November 8, the group originally requested to assign WGNA as the station's call letters; by January 1948, however, the company decided to call its new television property, WGN-TV. The three-letter base callsign – obtained by Tribune in 1924 for the former WDAP radio station (upon its purchase from Zenith-Edgewater Beach Broadcasting) by permission of the owners of the then-under-construction SS Carl D. Bradley and used in modified form for WGNB from November 1945 until the FM station ceased operations in May 1953 – refers to " W orld's G reatest N ewspaper," which the Tribune first used in a February 1909 feature commemorating the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth and served as the newspaper's motto from August 29, 1911 until December 31, 1976.

WGN Television began test broadcasts on February 1, 1948. Channel 9 informally signed on the air on March 6 to broadcast coverage of the International Golden Gloves Competition. The station officially commenced regular programming at 7:45 p.m. on April 5, with a two-hour-long entertainment special, WGN-TV Salute to Chicago. Originating from the WGN Radio studios at the Tribune Tower's Centennial Building annex (located at 435 North Michigan Avenue 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 by, among others, musician Dick "Two Ton" Baker, comedian George Gobel, singer Bruce Foote (who sang baritone on the WGN radio program, Chicago Theater of the Air), marionette performer Art Nelson, and bandleader Robert Trendler and the WGN Orchestra (then WGN Radio's in-house band); and a film previewing 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 to sign on in both the Chicago market and the state of Illinois, behind WBKB-TV, which began experimental operations in 1940 (as W9XBK) and began commercial operations as an independent station on September 6, 1946; and was one of three television stations and the only non-network-owned station to sign on in Chicago during 1948: ABC would launch WENR-TV (channel 7, now WLS-TV) on September 17 and NBC would launch WNBQ (channel 5, now WMAQ-TV) on October 8. It was also the seventh commercial station to sign on in the Midwest, the 19th such station to sign on in the United States, and the first of the two television stations that were founded by the Tribune Company to debut: the News Syndicate Company – a Tribune-controlled subsidiary of the New York Daily News that was operated by descendants of late founder and McCormick cousin Joseph Medill Patterson – would sign on independent station WPIX (now a CW affiliate) in New York City on June 15, 1948. Initially, the WGN television and radio stations operated from the Chicago Daily News Building on West Madison and North Canal Streets, from which WGN-TV's 586 ft transmission tower (which initially produced a 30-kilowatt signal covering a 45 mi radius) was also based. The WGN stations occupied space in the Daily News Building that was previously used as the studio and office facilities for WMAQ radio (670 AM, frequency now occupied by WSCR) from 1929 until its operations fully relocated to the Merchandise Mart in 1935. 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 began as an independent station. The station became a network affiliate on September 26, 1948, when it began carrying programming from the DuMont Television Network; CBS programming was subsequently added onto its schedule on December 1 of that year.

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 transmitted as 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 WBKB 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 the strongest affiliates of that network, 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, 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 operations of the WGN stations relocated to the Centennial Building, following renovations made to accommodate production and office facilities for WGN-TV. The refurbished facility included one master and two auxiliary studios (including a sub-basement studio situated 75 ft below street level that was intended to allow the WGN stations to continue broadcasts in the event of an atom bomb attack on Chicago), one 16mm and two 35mm film projectors, and four mobile cameras. On February 6, 1953, CBS assumed ownership of WBKB-TV through a $6.75-million acquisition from Balaban and Katz designed to allow United Paramount Theatres (UPT) – which absorbed Balaban and Katz in March 1949, after Paramount Pictures divested its chain of movie theaters by order of the U.S. Supreme Court – to acquire WENR-TV (which subsequently assumed the WBKB call letters and management staff that previously belonged to channel 4) as part of UPT's merger with ABC. As a consequence of the deal, which put United Paramount Theatres in compliance with FCC regulations that then forbade common ownership of two television stations within the same market, 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 channel 4 to channel 2 on July 5, 1953, in accordance with VHF 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 the Tribune Company – including 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, continuing to own stock in Tribune 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. 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 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. In March 1957, WGN began carrying programming from the NTA Film Network; this relationship lasted until the programming service ceased operations in 1961.

On January 15, 1956, the station moved its transmitter facilities to a 73 ft antenna atop 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 January 1958, WGN-TV – which had ordered RCA color television equipment in the fall of 1952, and began broadcasting select programs in the format on November 8, 1957 after conducting internal tests since the previous year – became the second television station in the Chicago market (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 include 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.

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), a two-story, 95,000 sqft complex on West Bradley Place in the city's North Center community. The Broadcast Center, which began housing production of some local programs 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 targeting downtown Chicago. It houses three television production studios and offices as well as two additional soundstages that were originally used as sound recording studios for WGN Radio until it moved to the Pioneer Court extension on North Michigan Avenue in 1986. (WGN Radio would eventually resume operations at the Tribune Tower in October 2012.) The Tribune Company repurposed the former Centennial Building facility for the Chicago American (later retitled Chicago Today in 1969), where the newspaper maintained office and publishing operations until it ceased publication in 1974; the space is currently occupied by a Dylan's Candy Bar location. An adjacent 20,000 sqft, single-story building that housed certain non-production-related operations for the WGN stations was annexed into the facility (expanding the complex to 14.4 acre) in 1966. The main building has since also served as the headquarters for the Tribune-owned digital multicast networks Antenna TV and This TV since January 2011 and November 2013, respectively. (Tribune would sell the complex to a joint venture between local real estate firms R2 Companies and Polsky Holdings for $22.25 million on January 31, 2017, allowing WGN-TV to lease the property for a minimum of ten years.)

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 group – sans the WPIX television and radio stations, which continued to be controlled by the Tribune-managed News Syndicate Co. before being integrated into the main Tribune station group after the company's 1991 sale of the Daily News – was renamed the WGN Continental Broadcasting Company, later rechristened as the Tribune Broadcasting Company in January 1981). The company gained its third television and second radio station in 1960, when it purchased KDAL-TV (now KDLH) and KDAL (AM) in Duluth, Minnesota from the estate of the late Dalton LeMasurier (Tribune sold KDAL-TV in 1978 and KDAL radio in 1981); this purchase was followed in 1966 by that of KCTO in Denver (which was subsequently re-called KWGN-TV) from J. Elroy McCaw. WGN Continental/Tribune's later purchases included those of WANX-TV (subsequently re-called WGNX, now WGCL-TV) in Atlanta (in 1983); KTLA in Los Angeles (in 1985); WPHL-TV in Philadelphia (in 1992); WLVI-TV in Boston (owned from 1994 until 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 Qwest Broadcasting (forcing the sale of WGNX to the Meredith Corporation in order to acquire WATL). Finally in December 2013, Tribune purchased Local TV LLC's 19 television stations, giving WGN new sister stations in nearby markets – ABC affiliate WQAD-TV in the Quad Cities and Fox affiliate WITI in Milwaukee – all three of which had already pooled their local news reports as part of an existing content and broadcast management agreement between Local TV and Tribune dating to 2008. (Before adding Local TV's nine Big Three network affiliates through that purchase, Tribune's television properties historically consisted mainly of independent stations or, from 1995 onward, affiliates of networks that have launched since 1986.)

WGN-TV was Chicago's leading independent station during the 1960s and into the 1970s, even as three UHF independent competitors made their debuts during those decades. 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 (a subsidiary of Field Enterprises, then owner of the Tribune's chief newspaper rivals, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Daily News) 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. A third 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 to achieve status as the second strongest independent station in Chicago and were the only independents in the market besides WGN that were able to turn a reasonable profit, with WCIU and all other competitors that came afterward lagging behind in both regards. WGN-TV served as the Chicago affiliate of the Overmyer/United Network (which consisted solely of the network's flagship program, The Las Vegas Show) 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 1,360 ft-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. Movies became a more intregal part of the station's schedule during the late 1970s and early 1980s. During this period, depending on whether sports events or specials were scheduled, WGN 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. In February 1977, the station 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 the late-evening newscast to an earlier 9:00 slot). By January 1980, when Channel 9 became the market's second television station to run a 24-hour program schedule (after WBBM-TV, which began maintaining a 24-hour 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.

National superstation (1978–1990)
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 throughout central parts of the Midwestern U.S. to serve markets that lacked a entertainment-formatted 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 Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri and Michigan – reaching an estimated 8.6 million subscribers. On November 9, 1978, WGN-TV joined the ranks of Atlanta independent station WTCG (later WTBS and now WPCH-TV) and became America's second national "superstation," when Tulsa, Oklahoma-based United Video Inc. (later United Video Satellite Group) – one of four satellite carrier firms that were granted federal authority to relay the station, among them Southern Satellite Systems (SSS), which began retransmitting WTCG in conjunction with the Turner Communications Group in December 1976 – uplinked the WGN-TV signal to a Satcom-3 transponder for distribution to cable and C-band satellite subscribers throughout the United States. (Though legally permissible under the 1976 Copyright Act's compulsory license statute, the WGN-TV signal was uplinked without the station's cooperation; until Tribune began providing the company a direct feed of the WGN Chicago signal in 1985, United Video initially did not compensate the station directly for retransmitting its signal, though WGN Continental/Tribune received licensing payments from cable systems for any programs to which it held the copyright.)

Within a week of attaining national status, WGN-TV was carried by approximately 200 additional cable television systems (reaching an estimated one million subscribers) nationwide. That reach would grow over the next several years, with the first heaviest concentrations in the Central United States (where WGN's telecasts of Chicago Cubs baseball, Chicago Bulls basketball and The Bozo Show became highly popular), before its cable coverage began to encompass most of the nation. As such, WGN became the first Tribune-owned independent station to be distributed to a national pay television audience (followed by WPIX [via United Video] in May 1984, KWGN-TV [via Netlink] in October 1987 and KTLA [via Eastern Microwave Inc.] in February 1988) and the first superstation to be distributed by United Video (with WGN and WPIX being joined by Gaylord Broadcasting-owned KTVT [now a CBS owned-and-operated station] in Dallas–Fort Worth in July 1984 and, after it assumed satellite retransmission rights from EMI, KTLA in April 1988). For about eleven years afterward, the WGN-TV satellite signal carried the same programming schedule as that offered in 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. WGN continued with its programming format, competing with WFLD and WSNS-TV – the latter of which would bow out of the competition in 1982, when, after two years of carrying the over-the-air subscription service only at night and on weekends, it converted into a full-time ONTV outlet – for independent supremacy in the market. 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), resulting in it 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 WFBN (channel 66, now UniMás owned-and-operated station WGBO-DT), initially running a mix of local public-access programs during the daytime hours and the Spectrum subscription service at night. A fifth competitor arrived on April 4, 1982, when a joint venture between Metrowest Corporation and local entrepeneur Marcelino Miyares signed on a shared operation over UHF channel 60 between English-language WPWR-TV (which would move to channel 50 in January 1987, and was initially affiliated with sports-centered pay service Sportsvision) and Spanish-language WBBS-TV (now UniMás owned-and-operated station WXFT-DT, which replaced the former timeshare upon WPWR's move to channel 50 as a byproduct of Metrowest's 1986 buyout of Miyares's share of the license and subsequent sale of channel 60 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 package that were used for the station's newscasts and station identifications between 1984 and 1993, while the "Chicago's Very Own" slogan has been used for two other news themes commissioned exclusively for WGN-TV in subsequent years (a John Hegner-composed theme package used from 1993 to 1997 and a 615 Music-composed custom package that had been used since November 1, 2007) as well as a recurring feature segment during the station's 9:00 p.m. newscast. At various points over the years, the "[city/region]'s 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 film-based ad hoc programming service, the MGM/UA Premiere Network.

On November 22, 1987, during that evening's edition of The Nine O'Clock News, WGN-TV's signal was briefly overidden 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 intrusion video excerpt; WGN engineers were able to successfully restore the signal by changing the frequency of its Hancock Center studio/transmitter link. 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 their pretend defecation as a "masterpiece for all the greatest world newspaper nerds," paraphrasing the meaning behind the WGN call letters). Bemused, sports anchor Dan Roan – who was presenting highlights of that day's NFL 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 approved the Syndication Exclusivity Rights Rule (or "SyndEx"), which required that cable systems black out syndicated programs carried on superstations and/or default network affiliates from nearby markets if an local station holds claim to the exclusive rights for their market. In response, when the rules went into effect on January 1, 1990, Tribune and United Video launched a separate national feed that offered a mix of local programs, sporting events (except for those that could not be cleared for national carriage due to NBA and Major League Baseball restrictions limiting the number of sports telecasts that could air outside of a superstation's home market each year) and some syndicated programs carried on the WGN Chicago signal to which Tribune and United Video secured national carriage as well as substitute programs acquired to replace shows seen on the Chicago signal that could not air over the national feed because of local exclusivity claims. (The national feed was originally structured similarly to the WWOR EMI Service, a now-defunct feed of Secaucus, New Jersey-based WWOR-TV that substituted its New York-area feed in the rest of the country upon the SyndEx implementation, albeit with a larger amount of shared programming than WWOR had run initially; however, the amount of programs shared between the WGN local and national feeds would decrease significantly during the 2000s and early 2010s as local exclusivity claims reduced the number of WGN-TV programs that Tribune could clear nationally in later years.) Of the four United Video-distributed superstations, WGN was the only one to increase its national coverage after the SyndEx rules were implemented, adding 2.2 million subscribers by July 1990; some systems also replaced WPIX and WWOR with the WGN superstation feed during the early 1990s.

On January 1, 1993, Tribune launched Chicagoland Television (CLTV), a local cable news channel that features rolling news, weather and sports content, as well as public affairs, sports-talk and entertainment news programs, originally utilizing its own in-house staff and resources from WGN-TV and the Chicago Tribune. CLTV consolidated its operations with WGN-TV on August 28, 2009, at which time the channel's operations were relocated from its original studio facility in Oak Brook to WGN-TV's Bradley Place studios and editorial control of CLTV was turned over to Channel 9's news department.

WB affiliation (1995–2006)
On November 2, 1993, Time Warner and non-equity partner Tribune (which would acquire an 11% interest in the network in August 1995) announced the formation of The WB Television Network, with Tribune agreeing to commit six of the seven independent stations it owned at the time as charter affiliates. WGN-TV was initially exempted from the contract, as station management had expressed concerns about how The WB's plans to expand its prime time and daytime program offerings would affect WGN's sports broadcast rights and the impact that the potential of having to phase out its sports telecasts to fulfill network commitments would have on the superstation feed's appeal to cable and satellite providers elsewhere around the United States.

Ironically, despite the aforementioned concerns with taking the WB affiliation, WGN had also vied to become the Chicago affiliate of the United Paramount Network (UPN), a joint venture between Chris-Craft/United Television and Paramount Television that announced its launch plans on October 21. On November 10, 1993, Paramount announced it had reached an agreement with Newsweb Corporation to affiliate WPWR-TV with UPN, which, upon the network's January 16, 1995 launch, would become the largest UPN affiliate not to be owned by either of its parent companies. Tribune finally agreed to commit WGN-TV as a charter WB affiliate on December 3, 1993, under a separate agreement with Time Warner that would also allow the superstation feed to act as a de facto national feed for The WB in order to bide it time to fill coverage gaps in "white area" markets that lacked a standalone independent station to serve as a local affiliate in time for and after the network's launch. In exchange, The WB agreed to reduce its initial program offerings to one night per week (from two) in order to limit conflicts with WGN's sports programming. (Prior to that deal, The WB had considered affiliating with WGBO-TV, which would later be purchased by Univision and convert into an owned-and-operated station of the Spanish-language network on December 30, 1994.) The superstation feed (which reached 37% of the country by that time) would extend The WB's initial coverage to 73% of all U.S. households that had at least one television set.

WGN-TV (and its superstation feed) became a charter affiliate of The WB when the network launched on January 11, 1995. Upon joining The WB, WGN's programming remained basically unchanged, continuing to feature syndicated programs (including the ad-hoc Action Pack syndication block, which aired weekends from September 1995 until September 1997), feature films, and locally produced shows. As The WB initially offered prime time programs only on Wednesdays at launch, Channel 9 continued to fill the 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. time slot leading into its late-evening newscast with feature films on most nights when sports events were not scheduled to air. By the time The WB adopted a six-night-a-week schedule (running Sunday through Fridays) in September 1999, the station had relegated its prime time film presentations to Saturdays. Channel 9 chose not to clear the network's Kids' WB block, in favor of airing a local morning newscast and an afternoon block of off-network sitcoms on weekdays and a mix of news, public affairs and paid programs on Saturday mornings.

On February 19, WCIU-TV – which had become an English-language independent station full-time as a result of Univision (from which it had aired programming on a part-time basis) moving to WGBO the month prior – reached an agreement with Time Warner to carry the Kids' WB lineup as well as WB prime time programs pre-empted due to sports broadcasts scheduled to air on WGN. (Although the network's programming was split between WGN-TV and WCIU-TV locally beginning with the Kids' WB block's September 9, 1995 debut, the WGN superstation feed carried The WB's prime time and children's programs until the stopgap network feed was discontinued. United Video intended to provide an alternate feed with substitute programming for markets with a WB affiliate; however, duplication of WB programming existed in markets with an over-the-air affiliate.)  Even as Chicago's network-owned stations began adopting network-centric station branding during the mid-to-late 1990s, WGN-TV continued to be referred to on-air as either "WGN Channel 9" or simply "Channel 9"; by 1999, the station began to be referred to mainly by the WGN call letters (as had been the case with the national feed since 1997). By that time, WGN replaced feature films that aired as part of its late night schedule (with the exception of its Saturday Action Theater presentations) with syndicated sitcoms.

On October 6, 1999, by mutual agreement between Time Warner and Tribune, the WGN national feed ceased to carry WB network programming and respectively replaced its prime time and Kids' WB lineups with movies and syndicated programs. Over the network's then-four-year existence, The WB began to fill most of the remaining coverage gaps within the top-100 markets through the signing of affiliation deals with various station groups (involving both standalone affiliations with leftover independent and converted commercial stations, and dual affiliations with existing affiliates of UPN and other commercial broadcast networks) and the launch of a cable-only affiliate group and programming feed for the 110 smallest media markets (The WeB, subsequently renamed The WB 100+ Station Group), which no longer made it necessary the network to continue being distributed over the WGN national feed. By 2002, game shows and additional talk and reality series had been added to the station's schedule, while syndicated animated series were added on weekend mornings. 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, becoming the last station in the Chicago market to run cartoons on weekday afternoons. WGN continued to carry Kids' WB's remaining Saturday morning lineup (which initially aired on a tape-delayed basis on Sunday mornings), after The WB replaced the block's two-hour weekday afternoon slot with the Daytime WB rerun block (which would evolve into The CW Daytime) in January 2006.

CW affiliation; split of the local and national signals (2006–2016)
On January 24, 2006, the Warner Bros. Entertainment division of Time Warner and CBS Corporation announced the formation of The CW Television Network, which would initially feature a mix of programs that originated on The WB and UPN – which Time Warner and CBS, respectively, would shut down in concurrence with The CW's launch – as well as new series developed specifically for the new network. In conjunction with the launch announcement, Tribune signed a ten-year agreement involving sixteen of the group's 19 WB affiliates (including WGN-TV), which would join eleven UPN stations owned by CBS to form The CW's initial group of charter affiliates. Because The CW primarily chose its original affiliates based on which of The WB and UPN's respective stations had the highest viewership in each market, WGN-TV was chosen as its Chicago affiliate over WPWR-TV, as Channel 9 had been the higher-rated of the two stations dating to WPWR's sign-on. On February 22, Fox announced that WPWR and nine other non-Fox-O&O stations (eight UPN stations, consisting of four in other major markets where The CW chose to align with a Tribune station and four based in non-Tribune markets, and one independent station) would become the initial charter outlets of MyNetworkTV, a joint venture between Fox Television Stations and Twentieth Television meant to fill the two weeknight prime time hours that The CW's launch would open up on UPN and WB stations owned by Fox and other groups that were not chosen to join The CW. The CW did not commission the WGN national feed (which became known as Superstation WGN in November 2002 and then as WGN America in August 2008) to act as a national default feed for the network, as it was able to maintain sufficient national coverage at launch through conventional over-the-air and digital multicast affiliates in the 100 largest markets as well as through The CW Plus, a small-market feed that included primary and subchannel-only over-the-air affiliates alongside the cable-only affiliates it chose to inherit from the predecessor WB 100+ service.

Channel 9 remained an affiliate of The WB until the network ceased operations on September 17, 2006; it became a charter affiliate of The CW when that network debuted the following day on September 18. WPWR, meanwhile, had disaffiliated from UPN on September 4 and began carrying MyNetworkTV programming upon that network's September 5 launch. As a CW affiliate, WGN-TV had been one of the network's higher-rated affiliates in terms of overall viewership, often drawing more viewers than Fox-owned WFLD, even in prime time despite the latter's Fox programming. Channel 9 carried the entire CW schedule from the network's launch, including its children's program blocks (Kids' WB, The CW4Kids/Toonzai, Vortexx and One Magnificent Morning); however, from September 2013 to September 2016, WGN had aired the network's daytime talk show block – which had been reduced to one hour (from two) in September 2011 – one hour earlier (at 2:00 p.m.) than other CW affiliates in the Central Time Zone, aligning with the block's East Coast airtime. WGN-TV gradually evolved its programming slate during the late 2000s and 2010s, adopting a news-intensive format (expanding its newscast production to 70 hours per week by 2016), shifting its weekday daytime lineup towards mainly first-run talk and game shows during the daytime hours, and further reducing its reliance on feature films on weekends in favor of increased local lifestyle and tourism programs (even discontinuing its longtime Saturday late-access movie presentations, occupied from 1976 to 2002 by its Action Theater showcase of action and adventure films, in 2016).

On April 1, 2007, Chicago-based real estate investor Sam Zell (former owner of defunct radio station group Jacor) announced plans to purchase the Tribune Company in an $8.2-billion leveraged employee-ownership stock buyout that gave employees effective ownership of the company. The transaction and concurring privatization of the company was completed upon termination of Tribune stock at the close of trading on December 20, 2007. Prior to the sale's closure, WGN-TV was one of two commercial television stations in the Chicago market, not counting network-owned stations, to have never been involved in an ownership transaction (along with WCIU-TV, which has been owned by Weigel Broadcasting since its February 1964 sign-on). On July 10, 2013, Tribune announced plans to split off its broadcasting and newspaper interests into two separate companies. WGN-TV and WGN Radio would remain with the original entity, which was renamed Tribune Media and was restructured to focus on the company's broadcasting, digital and real estate properties; the newspaper division – which, in addition to the Chicago Tribune, included publications such as the Fort Lauderdale-based South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the Baltimore Sun and the Los Angeles Times – was spun off into the standalone entity Tribune Publishing (known as Tronc from June 2016 until the company reverted to its former name in October 2018). The split was completed on August 4, 2014, ending the Tribune's joint ownership with WGN-TV and WGN Radio after 66 and 94 years, respectively. However, WGN-TV continues to maintain a content partnership with the Tribune.

On December 13, 2014, Tribune converted the WGN America national feed into a conventional cable channel that would focus on acquired and original programs, containing significantly more domestic and internationally acquired programming than it did prior to its separation from WGN-TV, and switched from a royalty payment to a retransmission consent revenue model. As a result, WGN America immediately ceased simulcasts of WGN-TV's Chicago-originated local programming (which was limited to its weekday noon and [until that simulcast was dropped the previous February] nightly 9:00 p.m. newscasts, select news specials, public affairs programs and special events, and sporting events, in addition to a limited number of off-network syndicated reruns, religious programs and feature films acquired for the Chicago feed). Starting with its addition to Comcast Xfinity's Chicago-area systems on December 16, the changeover allowed cable and IPTV subscribers within the market – as local satellite viewers had been able to do for about two decades – to receive WGN America for the first time. (As a result of the October 2007 separation of TBS from its Atlanta parent WTBS, WGN America had been the last remaining national superstation to be distributed to cable, IPTV, fiber optic and satellite television providers, whereas the other six remaining superstations are distributed outside their home regions mainly on satellite.)  Due to the programming separation of the local and national feeds, WGN-TV did not carry WGN America's original drama series (such as Salem and Manhattan) outside of promotional preview promos, limiting their local availability to subscribers of DirecTV and Dish Network and through WGN America's streaming agreement with Hulu. 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.

Return to independence (2016–present)
On May 23, 2016, after a year of protracted negotiations pertaining to financial terms (including the share of reverse compensation that Tribune would pay to keep CW programming on those stations), Tribune Broadcasting and CW managing partner CBS Corporation reached a five-year agreement that allowed twelve CW-affiliated stations operated by Tribune to remain with the network through 2021. WGN-TV was exempted from the renewed agreement, intending to disaffiliate from The CW after the previous agreement expired on August 31. The impetus of this would be that the station could air an increased number of Chicago Cubs, White Sox, Bulls and Blackhawks games in prime time during the calendar year, thereby giving WGN over-the-air exclusively over all sporting events it is contracted to broadcast for the first time since 1999. 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 (from 1993 to 2002), WCIU-TV (from 1999 to 2015) and WPWR-TV (from 2015 to 2016) to serve as alternate carriers of certain game telecasts it was contracted to produce (totaling roughly 30 per year). WB and CW network programs subjected to sports-induced displacements on their regular nights were shown on a tape-delayed basis later in the week (usually in a weekend evening timeslot not occupied by a scheduled game telecast, as neither The WB nor The CW has ever aired prime time programs on Saturdays and as The CW had embargoed providing programs on Sundays from September 2009 until October 2018).

Concurrently, Fox announced that WPWR-TV would assume the local rights to The CW (marking the second time that Fox Television Stations had owned a CW-affiliated station, as, under an existing contract that was already scheduled to expire before WJZY's conversion into a Fox O&O was announced, Charlotte sister station WJZY continued to carry the network's programming for about 3½ months after its purchase by Fox was finalized in April 2013). The final CW program to air on WGN-TV was Whose Line Is It Anyway? at 8:30 p.m. Central Time on August 31, 2016, leading into that night's edition of WGN News at Nine. Channel 9 reverted to independent status – marking the first time in 21 years that it would not be affiliated with a major broadcast network – on September 1, filling timeslots previously occupied by CW network shows mainly with additional syndicated programs on weekdays and an expanded weekend morning newscast, station-produced lifestyle programs and syndicated educational programs on weekends. Beginning with that day's airing of The Bill Cunningham Show, all CW programming concurrently moved to WPWR (resulting in the weeknight-only MyNetworkTV schedule being shifted to air on a three-hour delay from 10:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m.). As such, WPWR displaced WLVI in Boston as the largest CW station that is not owned by either Tribune or CBS Corporation. (Locally, WBBM-TV is the largest CBS owned-and-operated station that is not operated as part of a duopoly with an independent or a CW- or MyNetworkTV-affiliated station.)

Aborted sale to Sinclair Broadcast Group
On May 8, 2017, Hunt Valley, Maryland-based Sinclair Broadcast Group announced that it would acquire Tribune Media for $3.9 billion. The prospect of Sinclair acquiring WGN was met with consternation among station employees, due to concerns about the influence the group might have on the station's news content. Since the launch of the now-defunct News Central concept in January 2003, Sinclair has been known for requiring its stations to run internally syndicated news reports and commentaries that reflect a conservative perspective. (The city of Chicago and some adjacent suburbs are predominately liberal, while some outlying areas elsewhere in the market lean conservative.)        However, in order to comply with FCC ownership limits, Sinclair later announced that it would sell WGN-TV and New York City sister station WPIX to a third-party licensee. On February 28, 2018, Tribune filed to sell WGN-TV to WGN-TV LLC (a limited liability company controlled by Baltimore-based automotive dealer Steven Fader, who has been a business associate to Sinclair executive chairman David Smith) for $60 million. Under the terms of the proposed sale, which did not include WGN radio or WGN America, Sinclair would provide programming and sales services to the station and would have an option to buy WGN-TV outright within eight years. (Sinclair concurrently proposed selling WPIX to Cunningham Broadcasting – whose majority non-voting stock is held by the estate of the late Carolyn Smith, widow of Sinclair founder Julian S. Smith and mother of David Smith, which was also majority owner of Cunningham until January 2018 – intending to operate it under a master services agreement; however, FCC and Department of Justice scrutiny over that proposal led Sinclair to seek to directly acquire WPIX on April 24.)

In a revision to the acquisition proposal submitted on July 18, 2018, Sinclair disclosed it would instead acquire WGN-TV directly in order to address concerns expressed by FCC chairman Ajit Pai two days before concerning the partner licensees Sinclair proposed using to allow it to operate certain Tribune stations while materially reducing Sinclair's national ownership cap space short of the 39% limit. (For the same reason, Sinclair also proposed selling its CW-affiliated sisters KDAF in Dallas-Fort Worth and KIAH in Houston – which were originally proposed to be sold to Cunningham and have their operations leased to Sinclair under a shared services agreement – to an independent third party.) Despite this, that same day, the FCC Commissioners' Board voted unanimously, 4–0, to send the Sinclair-Tribune acquisition proposal to an evidentiary review hearing before an administrative law judge amid "serious concerns" about Sinclair's forthrightness in its applications to sell certain stations in markets where Sinclair and Tribune both had television properties. On August 9, Tribune announced it would terminate the Sinclair deal; concurrently, Tribune filed a breach of contract lawsuit in the Delaware Chancery Court, alleging that Sinclair engaged in protracted negotiations with the FCC and the DOJ over regulatory issues, refused to sell stations in markets where it already had properties, and proposed divestitures to parties with ties to Sinclair executive chair David D. Smith (such as the proposed WGN-TV LLC licensee) that were rejected or highly subject to rejection to maintain control over stations it was required to sell.

Pending sale to Nexstar Media Group
On December 3, 2018, Irving, Texas-based Nexstar Media Group announced it would acquire Tribune's assets for $6.4 billion in cash and debt. The deal—which would make Nexstar the largest television station operator by total number of stations upon its expected closure late in the third quarter of 2019—would give WGN-TV additional sister stations in nearby markets including Champaign–Springfield–Decatur (CBS affilaite WCIA and MyNetworkTV affiliate WCIX), Peoria–Bloomington (CBS affiliate WMBD-TV and Fox-affiliated SSA partner WYZZ-TV), Rockford (Fox affiliate WQRF-TV and ABC-affiliated SSA partner WTVO) and Terre Haute (NBC affiliate WTWO and ABC-affiliated SSA partner WAWV-TV). Nexstar stated that it would consider the sale of other "non-core" assets tied to the sale during or after the acquisition process, which may include WGN radio (which would become the group's first radio property should it be retained by Nexstar) and WGN America. The transaction received approval from Tribune Media shareholders on March 12, 2019.

WGN-DT2
WGN-DT2 is the Antenna TV-affiliated second digital subchannel of WGN-TV. Over the air, it broadcasts in standard definition on UHF digital channel 19.2 (or virtual channel 9.2 via PSIP). On cable, WGN-DT2 is available on Charter Spectrum channel 1260, RCN channel 268 and WOW! channel 79 in the Chicago area.

WGN-TV launched a digital subchannel on virtual channel 9.2 on June 19, 2006, which, through a groupwide agreement with Tribune Broadcasting, originally served as an affiliate of The Tube Music Network. The Tube ceased operations on October 1, 2007, at which time WGN-DT2 temporarily switched to a standard-definition simulcast of the station's main feed. On June 22, 2008, WGN-DT2 converted into an affiliate of the Latino-oriented bilingual network LATV (which would eventually move to the DT2 subchannel of low-powered WOCK-CD [channel 13] in July 2010). The 9.2 subchannel was converted into a charter affiliate of Antenna TV on January 1, 2011, upon the launch of the Tribune-owned classic television network.

WGN-DT3
WGN-DT3 is the This TV-affiliated third digital subchannel of WGN-TV. Over the air, it broadcasts in standard definition on UHF digital channel 19.2 (or virtual channel 9.2 via PSIP). On cable, WGN-DT3 is available on Charter Spectrum channel 1260, RCN channel 268 and WOW! channel 79 in the Chicago area.

On May 13, 2013, Tribune Broadcasting announced that it would replace fellow Chicago-based media company Weigel Broadcasting (which decided to exit the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer joint venture to concentrate on its competing film-oriented subchannel network, Movies!, and classic television network MeTV) as a partner in This TV. As a byproduct of this, when Tribune formally assumed Weigel's interest in the network on November 1, This TV's Chicago affiliation moved from WCIU-DT 26.5 (which subsequently affiliated with Bounce TV, previously carried on sister station WWME-CD2) to a newly launched subchannel on WGN-DT virtual channel 9.3.

WGN-DT4
WGN-DT4 is the TBD-affiliated fourth digital subchannel of WGN-TV. Over the air, it broadcasts in standard definition on UHF digital channel 19.2 (or virtual channel 9.4 via PSIP). On cable, WGN-DT4 is available on Charter Spectrum channel 1260, RCN channel 268 and WOW! channel 79 in the Chicago area. On November 30, 2017, through an agreement with Sinclair Broadcast Group, WGN-TV launched a digital subchannel on virtual channel 9.4 to serve as an affiliate of the digital content network TBD.

Digital channels
The station's digital signal is multiplexed:

Analog-to-digital transition
WGN-TV began transmitting a digital television signal on UHF channel 19 on January 4, 2001, operating from a transmitter located 1,486 ft atop the Sears Tower. (Incidentally, WGN-TV was one of six, originally eight, Chicago television stations that declined offers to move their analog transmitters to the Sears Tower antenna farm ahead of the building's 1973 completion.) The station shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 9, on June 12, 2009, the official date in which full-power television stations in the United States transitioned from analog to digital broadcasts under federal mandate. The station's digital signal continued to broadcast on its pre-transition UHF channel 19, with digital television receivers continuing to display WGN's PSIP virtual channel as its former VHF analog channel 9. As a consequence, WGN-TV permanently ceased transmissions from the John Hancock Center's west antenna tower and formally relocated its transmitter facilities to its existing placement on the Sears Tower digital antenna.

Though not a participant in the SAFER Act, WWME-CA (channel 23, now a MeTV owned-and-operated station) carried simulcasts of WGN-TV's 9:00 p.m. newscast – except in the event of sports delays – and WMAQ-TV's morning and early evening newscasts until July 12 to provide an analog "lifeline" for viewers that were unprepared for or who had reception issues following the digital transition.

Programming
Due to its news-intensive schedule, WGN, despite returning to its status as an independent after ending 21 years of network affiliation, airs only four hours of syndicated programs within its weekday daytime schedule. Syndicated programs broadcast by WGN-TV include Rachael Ray, The Steve Wilkos Show, Two and a Half Men, Black-ish, Elementary, Last Man Standing and Maury.

Locally produced programs
WGN-TV currently produces the following programs, some of which are also rebroadcast on CLTV:
 * Adelante, Chicago (English: Onward, Chicago) is a bi-weekly public affairs program (airing Saturdays every two weeks at 6:30 a.m., with an encore on CLTV the following Sunday morning) that debuted on February 19, 2000 and was originally hosted by former WGN-TV assignment reporter Eddie Arruza. Currently hosted by Lourdes Duarte (who also co-anchors the 4:00 p.m. hour of the WGN Evening News), it features topical discussions, interviews and feature segments focusing on Chicago's Hispanic community and culture.
 * Backstory with Larry Potash is a series of half-hour historical specials that premiered on October 18, 2018. Hosted by WGN Morning News anchor/assignment reporter Larry Potash, the program looks at interesting stories pertaning to history, culture, religion and science within and outside of Chicago.
 * Chicago's Best, which airs Sundays at 10:00 p.m. and premiered in 2011 under original hosts Brittney Payton and Ted Brunson, is a lifestyle program focusing on cuisine, attractions and events throughout Chicago., it is hosted by Elliott Bambrough (who joined the program in 2013), Lauren Scott and former WMAQ-TV traffic anchor Marley Kayden (both of whom joined the program in April 2018).
 * Living Healthy Chicago is a weekly health-focused program (airing Saturdays at 9:00 a.m.) that premiered in September 2011. Hosted by Jane Monzures, it features expert medical advice and health tips from local health professionals.
 * Man of the People with Pat Tomasulo is a half-hour late night comedy series (airing Saturdays at 10:00 p.m.) that premiered on January 20, 2018. Hosted by Pat Tomasulo" (who also serves as weekday sports anchor for the WGN Morning News) and taped in front of a live studio audience, it takes a satirical look at the past week's news, current events and pop culture through the perspective of the "everyman viewer."
 * People to People is a bi-weekly public affairs program (airing most Saturdays at 6:30 a.m., with a CLTV encore on Sunday mornings) that debuted in 1973 under original host and local civil rights leader Edwin C. "Bill" Berry. Currently hosted by Micah Materre (who also serves as weeknight co-anchor of the WGN Evening News and the 9:00 and 10:00 p.m. newscasts), the program community events and topical discussions focusing on the African-American community.
 * S.E.E. Chicago is a half-hour tourism-based entertainment program (airing Sunday nights at 10:30 p.m.) that debuted in 2017. Hosted by Dawn Jackson Blatner, the program showcases the best shopping, entertainment and events in Chicago and its suburbs.
 * Weekend Workbench, which airs Saturdays at 9:30 a.m. and premiered in September 2013, is a weekly home improvement show in which host Ryan Salzwedel guides viewers on home repair tips with the help of Chicago-area with DIY experts.

Channel 9 became known for its heavy schedule of local programs during the period from the 1950s through the 1980s, including some influential programs:
 * The Bozo Show, a long-running children's program that aired under various titles and formats – including as Bozo (1960–1961), Bozo's Circus (1961–1980) and The Bozo Super Sunday Show (1994–2001) as well as the short-lived prime time spin-off Big Top (1965–1967) – from June 20, 1960 until July 14, 2001. The WGN-TV iteration was the station's most successful local program in terms of both ratings and cultural impact, and became the most well-known program of the Bozo franchise partly as a result of the exposure it received after WGN became a national superstation in 1978. It originated as a live, half-hour midday broadcast (expanding to a full hour in September 1961) featuring comedy sketches, circus acts, cartoon shorts and in-studio games.  The titular clown was portrayed by Bob Bell until 1984 and by Joey D'Auria thereafter, and featured additional characters such as Ringmaster Ned (Ned Locke, 1961–1976), Sandy the Tramp (Don Sandburg, 1961–1969), Oliver O. Oliver (Ray Rayner, 1961–1971), Cooky the Cook (Roy Brown, 1968–1994), Wizzo the Wizard (Marshall Brodien, 1968–1994) and the circus manager (Frazier Thomas, 1976–1985). At the peak of its popularity, ticket reservations for the show's studio audience surpassed a ten-year backlog. (WGN-TV management would discontinue the wait list for tickets in 1990, and began awarding them through to a contest-style giveaway.) In response to Chicago Public Schools rule changes that disallowed students from going home for lunch, Bozo moved to weekday mornings and switched to a pre-taped format in August 1980; to accommodate the launch of the WGN Morning News, in September 1994, Bozo was relegated to Sunday mornings and remained there until the program was controversially discontinued by station management in 2001. For the final four years of run, The Bozo Super Sunday Show was restructured to incorporate segments compliant with FCC educational programming requirements.
 * Charlando (English: Chatting), a Spanish-language talk show focusing on Chicago's Hispanic and Latino community (originally airing Saturday mornings until 1992, when it was moved to Sundays) that aired from 1964 to 1999. Peter Nuno hosted the program for its entire 35-year run before retiring from WGN-TV in December 1999.
 * Creature Features, a local version of the horror film franchise which aired Saturday nights from September 19, 1970 until May 19, 1976, which featured classic hollywood horror and sci-fi films from the 1930s through the 1950s (many of which were Universal Studios releases). The films were presented by a disembodied voice known only as "The Creature" (voiced by WGN news anchors Carl Greyson and, later, Marty McNeeley). After the WGN version ended, the title (unpluralized as "Creature Feature") was used by WFLD for its weekend horror movie presentations until their replacement by the Son of Svengoolie showcase in 1979.
 * Family Classics, a showcase of family-oriented feature films that originally ran from September 14, 1962 to December 25, 2000 and was co-created by Frazier Thomas and Fred Silverman (then a WGN-TV executive). As host, Thomas also was responsible for selecting the titles featured on the program and edited them to remove certain scenes he deemed unfit for family viewing; Roy Leonard took over as host following Thomas's death in 1985, and remained in that role until the showcase ended its initial run. (After airing weekly throughout the fall-to-spring television season for most of its run, the program began airing sporadically during the holiday season in November 1993.) Family Classics was revived as an occasional series on December 8, 2017, with longtime entertainment reporter Dean Richards as host.
 * Issues Unlimited, a Sunday morning public affairs program moderated by Chicago Bulletin editor and columnist Hurley Green, Sr. from 1971 to 1987; the program featured a panel of local media representatives interviewing local and national newsmakers.
 * Ray Rayner and His Friends (originally Breakfast with Bugs Bunny from 1962 to 1964), a long-running children's program hosted by Ray Rayner from 1962 to 1980. The program featured animated shorts (including Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons), arts and crafts segments, animals (such as Chelveston the Duck, named after the military base Rayner was stationed during World War II), science segments conducted with J. Bruce Mitchell of the Museum of Science and Industry and a viewer mail segment in which Rayner appeared alongside a talking orange dog puppet, Cuddly Dudley (voiced by Roy Brown), which was originally created by the Chicago Tribune as a promotional item.

In addition, Channel 9 broadcasts several local events including the Uncle Dan's Thanksgiving Day Parade (which has aired since 2007, under an agreement with the Chicago Festival Association in which the WGN national channel – which continues to carry the parade despite its December 2014 programming separation from WGN-TV – was given national simulcast rights), the Chicago Auto Show (originally from 1972 to 1992 and again since 1999, when it reassumed the local rights from WLS-TV) and the Philadelphia-based Mummers Parade (by arrangement with MyNetworkTV-affiliated sister station WPHL-TV). Local events that WGN-TV aired in previous years have included the Bud Billiken Parade (from 1978 to 2011, with WCIU-TV obtaining primary rights to the broadcast beginning in 2012, before shifting exclusively to WLS-TV – which had been a partial rightsholder for the parade since 1984 – in 2014).

The WGN-TV studios on Bradley Place, in addition to housing a large number of its own programs, have also served as the production facilities for nationally syndicated programs, including Donahue (which shifted production from the Dayton, Ohio studios of WLWD [now WDTN] to the WGN-TV facilities in Chicago in 1974, where production of the daytime talk show remained before moving to WBBM-TV's Streeterville studios in January 1982), U.S. Farm Report (which originated from the Bradley Place facility from the agriculture program's national syndication debut in 1975 until production moved to South Bend, Indiana after Farm Bureau Journal's production unit assumed distribution rights from the defunct Tribune Entertainment in 2008), and At the Movies (which was produced from the facility from 1982 until 1990, three years after Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert left the program amid a 1986 contract dispute with Tribune Entertainment to develop Siskel & Ebert & the Movies with Buena Vista Television, which was produced out of WLS-TV's North State Street studios).

Lottery
WGN-TV began carrying live drawings from the Illinois Lottery at its inception in July 1974, airing as a half-hour Thursday night broadcast hosted by Ray Rayner and conducted at the station's Bradley Place studios. Channel 9 shared the rights to the drawings with WSNS-TV from March to May 1975 and again from September 1975 until August 1977, when WGN gained exclusivity over the drawing telecasts. With the introduction of the Daily Game (now Pick 3) in February 1980, drawings began airing nightly at 6:57 p.m. The drawing telecasts migrated to WFLD in January 1984; the Lottery would award the rights back to WGN-TV in January 1987. On September 16, 1989, the Lottery began producing a half-hour weekly game show, $100,000 Fortune Hunt. Initially hosted by Jeff Coopwood (replaced by Mike Jackson for the remainder of its run) with co-host Linda Kollmeyer (who also began serving as a host for the nightly drawings around that time), the series saw six on-air contestants selected from a preliminary drawing of scratch-off entry tickets select panels from a numbered 36-panel game board containing various dollar amounts. The $100,000 grand prize was awarded to the player with the highest prize amount after five rounds, while their two at-home partners (selected from a pool of 12 contestants) won $500 each; the remaining on-air contestants kept their accrued game earnings and their partners received $100. (Initially, each on-air contestant was given the option of keeping their winnings or trading them for other prizes.)

In 1992, WGN, WLS-TV and WBBM-TV each vied for the rights to the drawings and Fortune Hunt; after a 14-year involvement with Channel 9, the torch was passed to CBS-owned WBBM, which received a one-year contract beginning with the December 28 evening drawing. WBBM – which saw the acquisition as a way to help improve viewership for its late-evening newscast (which was continually in third place), although the drawing telecasts would ultimately produce no beneficial impact – had proposed moving the drawings to later in the evening (being held during that station's 10:00 p.m. newscast) and agreed to handle promotional responsibilities and production costs. Citing in part the station's statewide cable distribution (which, after the SyndEx rules were implemented, would occasionally subject the drawings to preemption if sports clearance restrictions forced the preemption of the delayed 9:00 p.m. newscast on the WGN national feed), the Lottery moved the games back to WGN on January 1, 1994. With this move, citing declining revenues under the WBBM contract due partly to the late timeslot of the results, the live evening drawings were shifted to 9:22 p.m.; midday Pick 3 and Pick 4 drawings were introduced on December 20 of that year. (On weekdays, the 12:40 p.m. live results aired during WGN's noon newscast, though the superstation feed did not carry the Saturday drawings live mainly because of SyndEx-related program substitutions.)

On July 9, 1994, Fortune Hunt was replaced by Illinois Instant Riches (retitled Illinois' Luckiest in 1998), with Mark Goodman and Kollmeyer as co-hosts. Produced in conjunction with Mark Goodson Productions (later Jonathan Goodson Productions) and airing until October 21, 2000, it featured a similar drawing format as its predecessor, but had individual contestants chosen randomly by a wheel spun by Kollmeyer each round (which was hooked to lights above each contestant's seat) play various mini-games. In September 1996, the station began carrying The Big Game multi-state drawing (replaced by Mega Millions in May 2002) each Tuesday and Friday; Powerball drawings were eventually added upon Illinois joining that multi-state lottery in January 2010. WGN America ceased carrying the drawings nationally on December 12, 2014; the Lottery ceased televising its daily drawings outright and moved the results for the Pick 3, Pick 4, Lotto with Extra Shot and Lucky Day Lotto (formerly Little Lotto until 2011) games exclusively to its website on October 1, 2015, upon switching to a random number generator structure.

Sports programming
Throughout its history, WGN-TV has had a long association with Chicago sports, with most of the city's major professional sports franchises – particularly the Chicago Cubs, White Sox, Bulls and Blackhawks – and several local and regional collegiate teams (including the Illinois Fighting Illini, the Northwestern Wildcats, the DePaul Blue Demons and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish as well as various Big Ten Conference universities) having regularly televised their games over channel 9.

The Cubs and White Sox were the first teams to be carried on the station on April 23, 1948, with a Crosstown Classic game that the Sox won, 4-1. (The Tribune Company held full ownership of the Cubs from 1981 until 2008, retaining a minority interest in the team until January 2019.)  Over the years, the number of Cubs and White Sox games on WGN have gradually decreased (down to about 70 per season for each team by 2008) as a result of the two Major League Baseball clubs – as well as the NBA's Bulls – migrating some of their local game telecasts to cable-originated regional sports networks, SportsChannel Chicago (later FSN Chicago) from 1987 until 2003 and then Comcast SportsNet Chicago (now NBC Sports Chicago) beginning in 2004. Beginning in 2015, WGN-TV began sharing the over-the-air rights to Cubs games with ABC O&O WLS-TV, resulting in Channel 9 carrying a reduced schedule of 45 games per season as part of a four-year contract involving the two stations. WGN carried the White Sox until 1972, before returning to the station for one season in 1981; the White Sox moved its local telecasts to WGN-TV after an eight-year absence in 1990.

The Bulls began carrying their games with its inaugural season in 1966; after airing their games on WFLD for four years, the Bulls returned to WGN-TV for the 1989–90 season, as the team began its NBA championship dynasty during the Michael Jordan era. WGN initially carried Blackhawks hockey games (which, per prohibitions on televised home games imposed by then-owner Bill Wirtz in order to sustain ticket sales, were restricted to away games) from 1961 until 1975. The Blackhawks returned to the station during the 2008–09 season, with a package of home and away games (the result of Rocky Wirtz's decision to end the home game television blackout after taking over the franchise's ownership following his father's death). WGN-TV aired its first Chicago Bears football game on October 1, 2012, when the Chicago signal carried a regular season Monday Night Football matchup against the Dallas Cowboys. (NFL rules require national games aired by cable networks to be syndicated to broadcast stations in the participating teams' home markets.) Although WLS-TV has right of first refusal to MNF due to its corporate parent The Walt Disney Company's majority ownership of ESPN, WLS passed on carrying the game in order to air that night's live broadcast of ABC's Dancing with the Stars.

WGN-TV also distributes its White Sox and Bulls telecasts to television stations in Illinois, Indiana and Iowa that are within their respective broadcast territories (including CW affiliate WISH-TV in Indianapolis and the subschannels of WGN sister stations WHO-DT in Des Moines and WQAD in Davenport, Iowa). When permitted under its contracts, WGN America occasionally aired national simulcasts of WGN's sports programming, mostly Cubs, White Sox and Bulls games. WGN America stopped carrying WGN's sports telecasts in October 2014, with then-Tribune President/CEO Peter Liguori citing the limited viewership and advertising revenue generated from televising them on a national basis relative to their contractual expense. However, WGN-TV's Cubs and White Sox game broadcasts are often carried on DirecTV's iteration of the MLB Extra Innings package, sometimes including local commercials and station promotions that were not shown during the WGN America telecasts from the imposition of the SyndEx rules until the 2014 separation of the national and local feeds. (This also was the case for WGN-produced games shown on WPWR-TV, as well as WLS-TV's Cubs broadcasts.)

On January 2, 2019, the White Sox, Bulls and Blackhawks agreed to an exclusive multi-year deal with NBC Sports Chicago to take effect that fall. This was followed on February 13 by the announcement of the formation of the Marquee Sports Network, a joint venture between the Cubs and Sinclair Broadcast Group that will launch in the Spring of 2020. Barring a licensing agreement with either network to allow some games to remain available over-the-air (similar to the respective arrangements involving sister stations WPIX and KTLA between the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers), WGN-TV would cease to carry live sports telecasts after the 2019 Major League Baseball season.

News operation
, WGN-TV presently broadcasts 70½ hours of locally produced newscasts each week (with 12½ hours on weekdays and four hours each on Saturdays and Sundays); in regards to the number of hours devoted to news programming, it is the highest newscast output of any television station in the Chicago market and of any station in Illinois. In addition, the station produces the sports highlight program Instant Replay, a 20-minute sports highlight program that airs on Sunday evenings during the final 20 minutes of the 9:00 p.m. newscast and is hosted by longtime sports director Dan Roan (who joined WGN as a weekend sports anchor and sports reporter in 1984).

The station's midday, early and late evening newscasts are subject to (at least, partial) preemption or delay due to local sports telecasts overrunning into that time period; since July 8, 2010, CLTV has served as an alternate broadcaster of WGN-TV newscasts that are pre-empted by the latter's sports broadcasts and airs live half-hour editions of WGN News at Nine on nights when Channel 9 carries a sports event being held on the West Coast that starts locally at 9:00 p.m. (An additional half-hour live newscast follows the game telecast on WGN-TV, which was originally aired under the WGN News at Nine title prior to the 2016 launch of its 10:00 p.m. newscast.) The WGN-TV weather staff also provides local weather updates for WGN Radio under an agreement that began on October 13, 2008, at the conclusion of The Weather Channel's ten-year content partnership with the radio station.

News department history
Although sports has been a major part of WGN-TV's identity, the station has also been well known in the Chicago area for its news programming, which, through its former co-ownership with the Chicago Tribune, has played an important role since its launch. WGN's news department began operations along with the station on April 5, 1948, with the launch of its first regular news program, the Chicagoland Newsreel, which was the first television newscast in the Chicago market to consist entirely of filmed coverage. The 15-minute broadcast – which originally aired weeknights at 6:45 p.m., with a midday edition at 11:30 a.m. being added in September 1949 – was anchored by news director Spencer Allen (who also anchored a 15-minute midday news program, Spencer Allen and the News, from 1951 to 1953) and utilized a large staff of photographers and technicians, many of whom had previously worked for the Tribune. From 1948 to 1965, WGN also produced an additional 15-minute-long newscast at 6:30 p.m., with Austin Kiplinger (to be replaced by Allen in 1953 and then by Lloyd Pettit in 1956) reading the news summary and Frann Weigel as the weather anchor; the program was expanded to a half-hour in September 1955, when Newsreel was discontinued in favor of an amended sports news segment (anchored originally by Vince Lloyd). After WGN-TV became an independent station in August 1956, the evening newscast was moved to 7:00 p.m. – becoming the market's first prime time newscast and often being subjected to sports-induced preemptions – before settling at 10:00 p.m. in September 1959, originally under the title 10th Hour News (known in later years as The Park-Ruddle News and [Jack Taylor/John Drury and] NewsNine).

In September 1951, Channel 9 began carrying a 15-minute late night edition of Chicagoland Newsreel that followed its late evening movie presentations (which began at 10:00 p.m. at the time). By 1967, the program had evolved into Night Beat, a 30-minute overnight newscast that – until it was discontinued in 1983 – featured the main anchor (which had included, among others, Greyson, McNeeley, Cliff Mercer and Jack Taylor) presenting a summary of local and world news headlines as well as a brief weather forecast summary. In February 1955, the station installed a coaxial cable link from the city room of the Chicago Tribune (originally done for the early newscast, First Edition, which aired from 1954 to 1956) to allow Tribune reporters and contributors to provide information on developing stories being covered by the newspaper and the WGN news department.

In 1965, WGN appointed the first dual-anchor team ever employed in Chicago television news, with Gary Park (who came to the station from KCRA-TV in Sacramento) and Jim Ruddle (who previously worked at WTVT in Tampa) taking the helm of the evening newscasts. On January 9, 1967, WGN shifted the 10:00 edition of the newscast by 15 minutes in an attempt to improve viewership by placing the telephone quiz show The Name Game in the timeslot. (This experiment ended in May 1967, when WGN reverted to carrying the late newscast in its former 10:00 p.m. slot and expanded it to 25 minutes.) The Park-Ruddle combination was broken up in June 1967, when Ruddle left to join NBC-owned WMAQ-TV, to be followed two years later by Park taking a prime time anchor role at KTVU in San Francisco. Also in 1965, WGN made its first attempt at a morning news show with Top 'o' the Morning; airing until 1983, Orion Samuelson – then a farm reporter for WGN Radio, who would eventually host the syndicated U.S. Farm Report starting in 1975 – and Harold Turner (later replaced by Max Armstrong) provided agricultural news and weather. From that point until 1983, WGN-TV aired five-minute-long news updates that led into select daytime and evening programs on the station, consisting of footage accompanied by an announcer reading wire reports from Associated Press and United Press International.

The station's newscasts have long established itself with top-drawer talent, many of whom have worked at WGN-TV for more than ten years, including Jack Taylor (anchor/reporter, 1954–1984, including a stint as primary weeknight anchor from 1970 to 1979), Carl Greyson (anchor, reporter and staff announcer, 1955–1980), Marty McNeeley (anchor/reporter, 1969–1986), Robert Jordan (anchor/reporter, 1973–1978 and 1980–2016), Muriel Clair (assignment reporter, 1978–present, part-time since 2011), and Steve Sanders (anchor/reporter, 1982–present). John Drury joined WGN-TV in 1967 for what would be a three-year stint as anchor of its 10:00 p.m. as well as occasional anchor of Night Beat. After working for WLS-TV for nine years, Drury returned to his former role at WGN in 1979, displacing Jack Taylor as 10:00 p.m. NewsNine anchor. During his second stint at WGN, Drury took on an expanded role doing assignment and investigative reporting (often producing the reports with investigative reporter Alex Burkholder). In 1982, then-Mayor Jane Byrne (accompanied by members of her public relations and cabinet staff) tried to talk Drury into shelving a report on Byrne's use of public funds towards city festivals designed to promote her administration in relation to her stint residing in the Cabrini-Green housing project. Drury went forward with the investigative report, which aided in Byrne's loss to Richard M. Daley in that fall's mayoral election and would help earn Drury a Chicago Emmy Award for Individual Excellence (the first of four Emmys during his career).

Another mainstay of WGN-TV has been Tom Skilling, who joined WGN in August 1978 to succeed Harry Volkman as the station's main evening meteorologist. Skilling – who is rumored to be the highest paid local television meteorologist in the United States – would become known for presenting his forecasts with detailed but fairly easy-to-understand analysis and striking accuracy (most noted by his predictions of the Groundhog Day blizzard two weeks in advance of its paralyzing effects on the Chicago area); his on-air forecasts routinely make use of ensemble computer models to illustrate expected weather scenarios. Skilling also occasionally hosts half-hour documentary specials explaining extreme weather phenomenon and advancements in forecasting technology (including 1991's It Sounded Like a Freight Train, focusing on the science of tornadoes, and 1992's When Lightning Strikes, focusing on the science and dangers of lightning), which have earned several Chicago Emmy nominations and wins, as well as a weekly feature on the 9:00 p.m. newscast, Ask Tom Why, in which answers viewer-submitted weather questions (and which served as the basis for a similarly formatted column featured in the Tribune's weather page). Under Skilling, WGN also coordinated the centralization of its weather operations to encompass WGN-TV, WGN Radio, CLTV and and the Tribune, and became a broadcast partner in the WeatherBug real-time automated weather observation network (the largest station member by market size). Skilling holds the record as the longest-serving television meteorologist in the Chicago market, having served as chief meteorologist at WGN-TV for 40 years.

The late newscast was moved into prime time and expanded to one hour on March 10, 1980, concurrently adopting a new title, The Nine O'Clock News. The shift to the 9:00 p.m. hour briefly made it the first hour-long prime time newscast in the Midwest and, for its first seven years in that slot, it was the Chicago market's only local television newscast at 9:00. Initially airing for a full hour five nights a week, Drury was joined on the weeknight editions by Skilling, sports anchor Bill Frink and commentator Len O'Connor (all of whom carried over to the newscast from the prior NewsNine format). On June 9 of that year, WGN switched to a hybrid local-national format that incorporated the Independent Network News – a Tribune-syndicated nightly news program originating from New York sister station WPIX, which was later retitled INN: The Independent News in September 1984 and USA Tonight in January 1987 – in place of the locally produced segments that had occupied the 9:30 p.m. half-hour since the March format change. After briefly being relegated to weeknights following the shift to prime time, half-hour weekend editions of the 9:00 p.m. broadcast were added on October 4, 1980, anchored originally by Larry Roderick and Robert Jordan. By 1985, Drury (who returned to his previous role as main co-anchor at WLS-TV in late 1984) and Denise Cannon (who became the former's co-anchor in 1981 and departed at the end of 1984) were succeeded as principal anchors by Rick Rosenthal and Pat Harvey.

Since the reformatting as a prime time newscast, WGN-TV has been the ratings leader in the 9:00 p.m. timeslot, with or without news competition in the arena and even at times when weaker-rated shows led into the newscast, and typically holds a larger audience than the 10:00 p.m. newscast on WBBM-TV. Legitimate competition sprang up for WGN on November 16, 1987, when Fox O&O WFLD consolidated the half-hour 7:00 and 11:00 p.m. newscasts that launched its full-scale news operation that August into a single broadcast at 9:00 that went up against The Nine O'Clock News. Although WFLD aggressively marketed its fledgling newscast towards younger audiences as having a fresher style compared to WGN's more traditional news format, viewer loyalty has continued to propel Channel 9 to #1 in the ratings at 9:00 to the present day (with one of the only exceptions being a tie with Channel 32 in the May 1996 sweeps period), even with the WFLD newscast having the Fox prime time lineup as its lead-in. For this reason, WFLD moved its newscast back to its original 7:00 p.m. timeslot in September 1988, only to return it to 9:00 the following year to accommodate the planned expansion of Fox's prime time lineup. WGN re-expanded its prime time newscast to one hour on June 4, 1990, after Tribune discontinued production of USA Tonight under the terms of a collaborative agreement between Tribune and Turner Broadcasting that gave CNN access to news content from the Tribune stations and gave the Tribune stations access to content from the CNN Newsource video wire service.

WGN began programming long-form news outside its established 9:00 p.m. slot on September 19, 1983, when it debuted Midday Newscope, which replaced syndicated game shows during the noon half-hour. Originally anchored by Rick Rosenthal (who was replaced by assignment reporter Steve Sanders, after Rosenthal replaced Drury as 9:00 p.m. co-anchor in 1984), the newscast – a local version of the syndicated Newscope format (not to be confused with the newsbriefs of the same title that WFLD aired until 1982), which was paired with the midday edition of INN – featured a hybrid of local news headlines and weather forecasts and in-depth consumer, financial, entertainment and lifestyle features. The program was reformatted into a more traditional newscast on September 17, 1984, as Chicago's Midday News, after Telepictures and Gannett Broadcasting discontinued the Newscope format. The midday newscast – which concurrently rebranded from WGN News at Noon to the WGN Midday News with the expansion – would eventually expand to 90 minutes (moving to an 11:30 a.m. start) on September 15, 2008; it was subsequently expanded to two hours (moving to 11:00 a.m.) on October 5, 2009.

WGN-TV made its first foray at a traditional long-form morning newscast on January 25, 1992, with the debut of hour-long 8:00 a.m. newscasts on Saturdays and Sundays. To accomodate the launch of Chicago's Weekend Morning News (which marked the first major weekend morning news attempt in Chicago television and one of the only instances of a television station carrying a morning newscast on weekends without already airing newscasts on weekday mornings) and the concurring moves of Charlando and People to People to Sundays, WGN dropped three long-running religious programs – What's Nu (produced by the Chicago Board of Rabbis), Heritage of Faith (produced by Protestant group Greater Chicago Broadcast Ministries) and Mass for Shut-ins (produced by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago) – from the station's Sunday morning lineup, a move that was criticized by the Council of Religious Leaders of Metropolitan Chicago and other religious leaders noting that the programs catered to diverse religious audiences in fulfillment of the station's public service programming obligations. (The latter two programs were subsequently acquired by WGBO-TV, under an agreement in which WGN-TV allowed them to continue to be produced out of the station's studios.) The Sunday edition was discontinued after the September 4, 1994 broadcast; the Saturday edition would follow suit four years later on December 19, 1998, with then-news director Steve Ramsey citing the need to provide more resources for its weekday morning newscasts. Weekend morning newscasts returned on October 2, 2010, with the debut of hour-long editions at 6:00 a.m. (shifted to a two-hour block at 7:00 a.m. on September 10, 2016 following Channel 9's disaffiliation from The CW.).

Morning news programming was extended to weekdays on September 6, 1994, with the WGN Morning News debuting as a one-hour broadcast from 7:00 to 8:00 a.m., anchored originally by Dave Eckert, Sonja Gantt and meteorologist Paul Huttner. In an effort to improve viewership, the program – which replaced children's programs (including The Bozo Show, which displaced the Sunday morning newscast in its move from weekdays) that had previously aired in that time period – was soon reformatted from a more traditional newscast to feature a mix of straight news and entertainment and lifestyle features that utilize a looser style similar to morning radio programs. This reformatting helped the Morning News to eventually begin beating competing local and national morning news programs – including its closest initial competitor, WFLD's Fox Thing in the Morning (now Good Day Chicago) – in the 25-54 age demographic and in total viewers. (The program would expand to two hours, extending until 9:00 a.m., on January 8, 1996, with a later hour-long expansion [to 10:00 a.m.] on September 3, 2013.) An hour-long 6:00 a.m. "Early Edition" of the newscast debuted on August 5, 1996; this block of the newscast would gradually expand to three hours, beginning with the addition of a 5:30 a.m. half-hour in January 2001 and ending with its July 11, 2011 extension to 4:00 a.m.   (The WGN Morning News became the first WGN-TV newscast to be denied clearance on the national feed in September 1996, with its forced removal reportedly being due to self-imposed exclusivity restrictions concerning the newscast's paid segments and rate charges that the station's sales department would have to pay if the segments aired nationally; simulcasts of the WGN Morning News temporarily returned to WGN America on February 3, 2014, when it began airing the 4:00 a.m. hour.) 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. In 2000, WGN-TV constructed a new 29,000 sqft newsroom on the eastern portion of its studio facility, increasing the building's size to approximately 131,000 sqft; the original newsroom was renovated for use by the station's weather department.

WGN scored a major coup in April 2008, when it persuaded veteran WMAQ-TV and WFLD anchor Mark Suppelsa – who turned down a contract with the latter due to a planned salary cut – to take over as lead anchor of the 9:00 p.m. newscast, replacing Steve Sanders (who was moved to the midday newscast and was later joined in September 2009 by his former co-anchor on the 9:00 p.m. broadcast from 1993 until Suppelsa's appointment, Allison Payne, after Micah Materre was moved to the prime time newscasts). Suppelsa remained a main co-anchor of the weeknight newscasts until his retirement from broadcasting in December 2017, and was replaced two months later by Joe Donlon (who served a similar role at KGW in Portland, Oregon). On July 19, 2008, beginning with that night's edition of the 9:00 p.m. newscast, WGN-TV became the third television station in the Chicago market to begin broadcasting its local newscasts in high definition. Video from remote and field equipment was initially broadcast in 480p standard definition following the transition; high definition cameras began to be utilized for field reports in July 2010, a move which made WGN-TV the first station in the market to broadcast all locally originated portions of its newscasts (including live field reports) in HD.

Starting under the direction of now-former news director Greg Caputo, WGN-TV spearheaded a major expansion of its news programming. WGN first launched an early-evening newscast on September 15, 2008, when it premiered the WGN Evening News, a half-hour program at 5:30 p.m. Monday through Fridays. The early-evening newscast expanded to one hour (starting at 5:00 p.m.) on October 5, 2009, and then to Saturday and Sunday evenings on July 12, 2014. The weekday editions of the newscast were later expanded to include a second hour (starting at 4:00 p.m.) on September 8, 2014, and then to three hours (extending it to the 6:00 p.m. hour) on April 4, 2017. (This and subsequent newscast additions were not cleared by the superstation feed up until the conversion of WGN America – which had its 9:00 simulcast referenced by WGN anchors at the start of the broadcast from 2008 to 2014, except in instances of preemptions caused by clearance issues that prevented a game telecast shown locally from being cleared for national broadcast – into a conventional cable channel.) In 2009, WGN-TV began streaming its weekday midday and 5:00 p.m. newscasts live on its website. On February 22, 2010, WGN-TV became the first television station in the Chicago market to allow iPhone users to watch live streams of its newscasts; the 6:00 to 9:00 a.m. block of the WGN Morning News, the midday and 5:00 p.m. newscasts were initially available for streaming to iPhone users. (At present, all newscasts are streamed through the station's website and on Apple devices, though sports segments are blacked out – presented only with the audio feed – due to streaming restrictions on sports highlights imposed by the major sports leagues.) On October 5, 2015, the station restored a 10:00 p.m. newscast – which only airs Monday through Fridays – to its schedule after 35 years.

Notable current on-air staff

 * Anchors
 * Jackie Bange – weekend evening anchor
 * Dan Ponce – weekday morning (4:00–7:00 a.m.) anchor
 * Lourdes Duarte – weekday 4:00 and 5:00 p.m. anchor

In addition to providing weather forecasts for WGN-TV, the WGN Weathercenter Team also provides forecasts for the Chicago Tribune, WGN (720 kHz) and CLTV.
 * Weather team
 * Tom Skilling (AMS Seal of Approval) – chief meteorologist


 * Reporters
 * Nancy Loo – general assignment reporter
 * Dean Richards – entertainment reporter and film critic

Notable former on-air staff

 * Mike Barz
 * Bob Bell
 * Thom Brennaman (now at Fox Sports and Fox Sports Ohio)
 * Jack Brickhouse
 * Marshall Brodien
 * Lorn Brown
 * Roy Brown
 * Cheryl Burton (now at WLS-TV in Chicago)
 * Chip Caray (now at Fox Sports South and SportSouth)
 * Harry Caray
 * Susan Carlson (now with WMAQ-TV)
 * Bob Collins
 * Bob Costas (formerly at NBC Sports and remains at MLB Network)
 * Joey D'Auria
 * Merri Dee
 * Phil Donahue
 * John Drury
 * Jim Durham
 * Milo Hamilton
 * Pat Harvey (now at KCBS-TV in Los Angeles)
 * Bob Jordan (retired)
 * Johnny "Red" Kerr
 * Rich King
 * Wayne Larrivee
 * Roy Leonard
 * Vince Lloyd
 * Ned Locke
 * Joe McConnell
 * Allison Payne
 * Lloyd Pettit
 * Jimmy Piersall
 * Jim Ramsey (retired)
 * Ray Rayner
 * Randy Salerno
 * Don Sandburg
 * John Schubeck
 * Keenan Smith (now at WXYZ-TV in Detroit)
 * Wendell Smith
 * Mark Suppelsa (retired)
 * Chuck Swirsky
 * Jack Taylor
 * Roseanne Tellez (now at WBBM-TV in Chicago)
 * Frazier Thomas
 * Harry Volkman
 * Jim Williams (now at WBBM-TV in Chicago)
 * Bill Weir (now at CNN)

WGN-TV in Canada
In Canada, WGN-TV is available on most cable television providers as well as on satellite providers Bell TV and Shaw Direct, typically as part of a la carte superstation packages available to subscribers of premium cable channels (such as the sister services now known as Crave and Starz, Super Channel, Super Écran and, until those two networks ceased operations in 2016, Movie Central and Encore Avenue). Bell TV has always used the Chicago area signal as its distributed WGN feed; Shaw Direct and most cable providers relayed the now-former superstation feed until January 17, 2007, when Shaw Broadcast Services (the primary Canadian supplier of the WGN superstation feed) replaced it with the Chicago broadcast signal. As a network affiliate, WGN-TV provided WB and CW programs to areas of Canada equidistant from the Canadian–U.S. border that could not receive over-the-air signals of other WB/CW affiliates from American cities near the border. The WGN local feed is also subjected to fewer sports blackouts than WGN America was subjected to prior to the separation of the national and local feeds, as blackouts of programming to which Canadian broadcasters hold domestic rights apply only to imported U.S.-based specialty channels. However, simultaneous substitution rules have applied to certain CW programs that were also carried by Canadian-based terrestrial networks (such as Global, Citytv and CTV Two). The WGN feed has, at times, been used on some systems as the feed for Blackhawks game telecasts simulcast on the NHL Centre Ice sports package.

As a result of its conversion from a superstation into a basic cable channel the day prior, Tribune Broadcasting sent notice on December 15, 2014, that it would cease distributing WGN America within Canada after December 31. While the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) had approved the Chicago station's broadcast signal and its national cable feed for carriage on any domestic multichannel television provider (including cable, satellite, IPTV and MMDS services), the move was likely done to comply with CRTC genre protection rules in effect at the time, which prohibited general entertainment programming formats by domestic or foreign cable channels. The WGN-TV Chicago feed, however, remains authorized for domestic distribution as a superstation.