. In honor, Nick Digilio and listeners discuss the best Chicago News Anchors: Past and Present. With NBC, he hosted the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade from 1998 to 2017 and co-hosted the opening ceremonies of several Olympic Games. [46][47][48] From 1966 to 1991, the station also carried a package of college football and basketball games involving teams in the Big Ten Conference; WGN also aired coverage of high school football games involving teams in the Chicago Public High School League from 1958 to 1979 and the Chicago College All-Star Game from 1948 to 1976. WGN Radio Sports Reporters Dave Eanet and Mark Carman join John Williams with the story of how Ed Farmer's phone call to President Bush allowed the game to go on, and more fun memories. Holidays. In connection with the out-of-court settlement between WFLD station management and the White Sox, through the same agreement signed on September 14, 1989 that resulted in that station also re-acquiring the local television rights to the Sox, the Bulls (which Reinsdorf as part of Chicago Professional Sports Limited Partnership, a 23-member majority shareholder group that acquired portions of its 56% share of the team from shares owned by, among others, the estate of longtime owner Arthur M. Wirtz and New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner bought in March 1985 for an estimated $9.2 million) announced that it would move its local television broadcasts back to WGN-TV under a five-year deal, beginning with the 198990 season. 4.88 (172) 24hr. At various points between the station's founding in 1948 until 2019, WGN Sports produced telecasts from several of Chicago's major professional sports teams, most notably the Chicago Cubs (MLB), Chicago White Sox (MLB), Chicago Bulls (NBA) and Chicago Blackhawks (NHL). (Ironically, two seasons later, the Cubs underwent a major turnaround and had its strongest season in decades, going on to win its first World Series championship since 1908; WGN America would air the Cubs' 2016 World Series victory parade on November 4 of that year. The ruling permitted the station to televise at least 30 games (eleven fewer than the 41 annual games that the Bulls and WGN requested) over the Chicago signal and superstation feed, while allowing the NBA to impose a reasonable rights fee (around $40,000, rather than the $100,000 licensing fee sought by the NBA) for broadcasts of each game, based on the consideration that the league received more than $2 million in annual copyright payments from WGN's Bulls broadcasts. Try $2.15 billion", "Ricketts Family Completes Purchase of Cubs From Tribune Company (So What Does That Mean? CLTV also offered late-night replays of afternoon Cubs games from the previous gameday. ), After he inherited the team from his father following the elder Wirtz's death in September 2007, Rocky Wirtz decided to end the longstanding embargo on local home game telecasts. WGN sports anchor Dan Roan will retire in February 2022. [27] Around this time, White Sox broadcaster Harry Caray joined the WGN family, occasionally acting as a substitute sports anchor for its evening newscasts for most of the 1970s. TV Host - Sportscaster. Amidst this hiatus, in February 2020, Chicago Fire FC (MLS) announced a multi-year agreement with WGN-TV to transfer their over-the-air telecasts to the station beginning with its 2020 season, returning regular sporting events to the station after a seven-month lag. Restrictions similar to those that affected WGN Americaas well as the absence of contractual streaming rightsalso prevent WGN-TV from running sports highlights during live streams of the station's newscasts on the WGNTV.com website (unusual since some stations, including a few of WGN-TV/WGN America's Tribune-owned sister stations, have had permission to run sports highlights during live streams of local newscasts on their websites and mobile applications), which are substituted with a disclaimer screen denoting the restrictions that runs in place of the sports segment's video feed and accompanied by the audio portion of the segment. Dan began his career at WCIA-TV in 1977. The service, which evolved into SportsChannel Chicago in 1989, would move exclusively to cable on Cablevision's suburban Chicago systems in January 1984; Sportsvision's over-the-air sports rights were transferred to ONTV around this time. [4][5] After a 1994 reader poll, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that viewers appreciated the "down-to-earth, no-hype styles" of King and his fellow WGN sports anchor Dan Roan.[6]. And Hate - Weigel, Jiggets, Larrivee Win Poll Position". [69], In April 1990, NBA Commissioner David Stern lowered the number of superstation-licensed telecasts to an annual limit of 20 games, a move it claimed would limit negative impacts on game viewership on the league's national television partners (at the time, TNT and NBC) as a result of concurring deals involving WGN and the Bulls and TBS and the Atlanta Hawks (the latter of which was part of an overall deal with Turner Sports that granted TNT national telecast rights to games from other NBA teams). . Following its launch in January 1993, WGN-TV began leasing airtime on sister cable news channel Chicagoland Television (CLTV) to carry a limited number of live Chicago Cubs game telecasts that were prohibited from airing on the station due to Major League Baseball's national television contracts at the time with CBS and ESPN. )[29][30][31] With Harry Caray moving to Cubs play-by-play duties and Jimmy Piersall moving to Sportsvision as its pre- and post-game show host, the team hired former major league players Don Drysdale (who previously served as commentator for the California Angels and ABC Sports) and Ken Harrelson to helm the Sox broadcast booth for the 1982 season.[32]. . Steve Crocker, who worked as a news anchor and reporter for more than 30 years at WBBM 780-AM/WCFS 105.9-FM, died March 17 in Asheville, North Carolina. 9 ratings". On a stage he'd always dreamed about taking, the former Georgia defensive star stood before a group of reporters and gave an emotional memorial about his friend and former college teammate, Devin Willock, who was killed in a car crash Jan. 15. Among the Bears games shown on the station were simulcasts of ESPN-televised Monday Night Football broadcasts (including match-ups against the Dallas Cowboys on October 1, 2012, and against the Washington Redskins on September 23, 2019). He was the co-host of NBC's Today show from 1997 to 2017, and a contributor for Dateline NBC. There are things you . The veteran Chicago sportscaster and former Comcast SportsNet Chicago host. [18][19][20], On November 5, 2013, the Cubs exercised an option to opt out of their television contract with WGN-TV which was originally set to end in 2022 following the 2014 season, with the intent of seeking a higher-value deal for the next five-year contractual period. As part of an out-of-court settlement between Sox ownership and WFLD, on September 14, 1989, the Reinsdorf ownership group signed a five-year agreement with WGN-TV to carry a minimum of 45 White Sox games per year, beginning with the 1990 season. Former San Diego State and NBA Player - Randy Holcomb Joins Hoot in The Sports Deli Podcast: Where Everyone Deserves a Seat at the Table . Chicago Tribune, June 27, 1980. . As a former teacher "Ms. Beverly" led daily schoolroom sessions on WGN-TV. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) speaks to reporters as he arrives to the Capitol for a series of procedural nomination votes on Tuesday, February 28, 2023. With WGN-TV's emerging prominence as a national superstation during the 1980s and 1990s, Caray's fan base and that of the Cubs grew beyond Chicago and the Midwestern U.S. into other parts of the country. 4.98 (284) 24hr. [85] Although the Bulls initially maintained that WGN would still be able to nationally televise Bulls games, in October 1996, WGN-TV announced plans to restrict distribution of the 35 Bulls games it was scheduled to air during the 199697 season (a five-game increase over the 199596 season) exclusively to the Chicago area signal. )[50], Additional games would be transferred to CLTV beginning with the 1998 season, in order to comply with contractual limits imposed by The WB (which began offering its programming over WGN upon the network's January 11, 1995 launch) on the number of network program preemptions, other than those caused by long-form breaking news coverage, that could occur on an annual basis. [22][23], On March 9, 1948, two days after the station signed its initial broadcast contract with the Cubs, WGN-TV signed a separate agreement with the Chicago White Sox to carry a package of daytime and evening games held at Comiskey Park, including all 21 nighttime games that were scheduled for the 1948 season, originally set to take effect with the April 20 season opener against the Detroit Tigers. His big break came after spending the last four years at the station covering . Nov 21, 2022, . In February 1984, Dan Roan arrived at WGN in Chicago after working as a sports director at CBS affiliate WCIA, covering the Champaign-Urbana market. 9 reporter and former WTTW-Ch. Tribune Broadcasting contended that the petition was "protectionist," noting the lack of evidence that "viewers' current ability to choose between a local broadcast and a different version of the same game is harmful to either sports or the public interest." Giving on 10. [70][71] The new restriction spurred a conspiracy and antitrust lawsuit that was filed by the Bulls (one of two NBA teams that voted against the proposal, along with the New Jersey Nets, then broadcasting over Secaucus, New Jersey-based superstation WWOR-TV) and Tribune Broadcasting with the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on October 16, 1990, alleging that the league rules would harm the Bulls, their fans and WGN and that Stern's proposal was aimed at "phas[ing] out such superstations telecasts entirely in increments of five games each year over the next five years." The sale was approved in a unanimous vote among the National League team owners on August 6 of that year. (The WGN superstation would carry movies in place of the embargoed Bulls telecasts; the 9:00p.m. newscast was also preempted nationally as a result of the restrictions due to their being subject to delay on the Chicago signal due to game overruns. Dan Roan. Along with Major League Baseball telecasts, WGN-TV's initial sports lineup included a Saturday night wrestling program produced by National Wrestling Alliance promoter Fred Kohler, Wrestling From Marigold, originating from the Marigold Gardens arena in downtown Chicago. The league's Board of Governors applied a set limit in June 1985, restricting the number of seasonal NBA telecasts that could be licensed to superstations to 25 games (which was applied to the Bulls' 1989 contract with Channel 9). WGN-TV shared the local telecast rights to the Cubs with WBKB-TV (channel 4, now CBS owned-and-operated station WBBM-TV on channel 2) until 1951, with Channel 9 gaining exclusive rights to the Cubs broadcasts starting in 1952. Only on WMUR News 9. Kupcinet began writing sports columns for the The Chicago Daily Times (now known as the Sun-Times) in 1935. Steve Gelbs. [21] On January 7, 2014, as part of a four-year contract with the station, WGN-TV announced that it would air a reduced slate of 45 Cubs games per season beginning in 2015; the remaining share of over-the-air broadcasts, totaling 25 games per season, would air on ABC-owned WLS-TV (channel 7), which acquired partial broadcast rights to those games on December 12, 2014. Gross, Gil - Morning personality at KLAC-AM in Los Angeles. Even prior to Tribune's purchase of the team, Chicago Cubs management had lauded the benefits that WGN-TV's telecasts of their games for providing needed exposure and bolstering their fanbase dating to 1953, when Cubs business manager James P. Gallagher expressed that the team's telecasts "[had] helped to promote interest in the Cubs and in baseball in general in the Chicago area[, helping] to keep [..] attendance up and [bringing] the game[s] to many people who could not get out to the ball park. [75] Subsequently, on April 14 of that year, a three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals with the Northern District Court that overheard an appeal of Will's decision held that the superstation limit was an illegal restraint of trade. She was the station's first female sports anchor. White Sox Play-By-Play Announcer Ed Farmer passed away Wednesday at the age of 70. bailey caravan wallboards. 50 to station rotation", "CW, Tribune Stations Set Affiliation Deal as WGN-TV Chicago Goes Indie", "WGN-TV/Chicago To Become Independent Station Featuring Local News, Live Sports, High-Quality Syndicated Programming", "WGN to air more sports after dropping CW", "WGN-TV Takes NBA to Court Over Superstation Rule", "TV SPORTS; Bulls, Superstations And Power Moves", "The Economics of Sports Leagues - The Chicago Bulls Case", "Bulls Get OK for 30 WGN Games in '92-93", "Cable Rights Spur Renewal of NBA-WGN Battle", "Bulls, WGN Hit Court Again in TV Dispute with NBA", "PRO BASKETBALL; N.B.A. The move substantially reduced the number of games shown on WGN-TV from 144 games in 1997 to 92 games in 1998, with 62 additional WGN-contracted games being placed on CLTV and a select number of additional games originally set to air on CLTV also being shifted to WGN. 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