WGN-TV history

On January 25, 1950, the WGN stations relocated their operations to the Centennial Building.

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 15, 1956, the station moved its transmitter facilities to a 73-foot tall (22 m) antenna on the fourth floor of 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.

After initial struggles due to its carriage of programs that could not accrue viewership sufficient to attract national advertisers, WGN began turning profitable by October 1957.

Locally based Weigel Broadcasting signed on WCIU-TV (channel 26) on February 6, 1964, with a multi-ethnic programming format.

In May 1969, the station relocated its transmitter facilities to the 1,360-foot (415 m)-tall west antenna tower of the John Hancock Center on North Michigan Avenue.

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 Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri and Michigan—reaching an estimated 8.6 million subscribers.

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.

On September 18, 1981, Focus Broadcasting signed on Joliet-based WFBN (channel 66, now WGBO-DT), initially running a mix of local public-access programs during the daytime hours and the Spectrum subscription service at night.

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 the MGM/UA Premiere Network ad hoc syndicated film service.

On January 1, 1993, Tribune launched Chicagoland Television (CLTV), a local cable news channel that features rolling news, weather and sports content and public affairs, sports-talk and entertainment news programs, along with having formerly acted as an overflow feed for WGN's sports telecasts.

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 Saturday nights.

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, effectively becoming the sole remaining station in the Chicago market to run cartoons on weekday afternoons.

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.

On April 1, 2007, Chicago-based real estate investor Sam Zell announced plans to purchase the Tribune Company in an $8.2-billion leveraged buyout that gave Tribune employees stock and effective ownership of the company.

After a protracted four-year process, on December 31, 2012, Tribune formally exited from bankruptcy under the control of its senior debt holders, Oaktree Capital Management, JPMorgan Chase and Angelo, Gordon & Co.

On July 10, 2013, Tribune announced plans to split off its broadcasting and newspaper interests into two separate companies.

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.

Central Time on August 31, 2016, leading into that night's edition of WGN News at Nine.

Sinclair Broadcast Group announced their purchase of Tribune Media on May 8, 2017, for $3.9 billion, a deal publicly met with consternation among station employees due to concerns about the influence the conservative-leaning group could potentially have on WGN's news content.

Following the collapse of the Sinclair merger, Nexstar Media Group agreed to acquire Tribune's assets on December 3, 2018, for $6.4 billion in cash and debt.