WGN-TV goes national
On October 26, 1978, one day after the agency implemented an "open entry" policy for transponder resale carriers to feed distant television station signals to cable television systems, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted authority to four common carrier satellite relay firms – Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Southern Satellite Systems and United Video Inc. (later United Video Satellite Group), Lansing, Michigan-based American Microwave & Communications and Milwaukee-based Midwestern Relay Company – to uplink the WGN-TV signal to satellite to cable television providers serving various locations throughout the 48 contiguous U.S. states. [31] Southern Satellite Systems – founded in 1975 by Ted Turner and subsequently sold to former Western Union marketing executive Edward L. Taylor to comply with FCC rules prohibiting a common satellite carrier from having involvement in program origination – was the leading contender to uplink the WGN signal for availability to a nationwide audience, intending to make it the second independent station that the company distributed via satellite, after Turner's Atlanta, Georgia, independent station WTCG (soon WTBS), which SSS began redistributing to American cable and satellite systems in December 1976. However, in a memo released to provider clients on October 30, 1978, Taylor announced that Transponder 13 of Satcom 1 (which SSS had assigned to beam the signal to participating providers) had failed and that the communications satellite's operator, RCA American Communications (now SES after GE's sale of the former RCA Americom, purchased in the aftermath of its parent RCA, to Société Européenne des Satellites), had refused a request to assign it a new transponder unless Satellite Communications Systems (a joint venture between SSS and Holiday Inn) agreed to dismiss a lawsuit it filed against RCA on October 16 over retaining use of Satcom Transponder 18 after January 1, 1979. [30] [32]
On November 9, 1978, United Video Inc. – which stepped in to oversee uplink responsibilities in lieu of Southern Satellite Systems – uplinked the WGN-TV signal from a satellite relay facility in Monee, Illinois to the Satcom-3 communications satellite for redistribution to cable systems and C-band satellite providers throughout the United States. This resulted in WGN-TV joining the ranks of WTBS to become America's second national superstation and becoming the first of three independent stations to be redistributed on a national basis before the end of 1979: KTVU (now a Fox owned-and-operated station) in Oakland, California was uplinked by Satellite Communications Systems in December 1978 and WOR-TV (now MyNetworkTV owned-and-operated station WWOR-TV) in New York City was uplinked by Newhouse Newspapers subsidiary Eastern Microwave Inc. in April 1979. [31] [32] It was also the first Tribune-owned independent station to be distributed to a national pay television audience—United Video would later uplink WPIX (now a CW affiliate) in New York City in May 1984; [33] Netlink began distributing KWGN-TV (now a CW affiliate) in Denver in October 1987; [34] and Eastern Microwave began distributing KTLA (now a CW affiliate) in Los Angeles in February 1988 [35] —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 [36] and, after it assumed retransmission rights from Eastern Microwave, KTLA in April 1988. [37] (Although all three were intended for national distribution, WPIX, KTLA and KWGN have primarily been distributed within their respective regions of the United States; Dish Network made them all available nationally for those who subscribed to the provider's a la carte superstations tier prior to its decision to halt its sale to new subscribers in September 2013, while Netlink initially distributed KWGN as part of its "Denver 5" out-of-market package for C-band and 4DTV subscribers.)
By the end of its first week of national availability, the WGN-TV signal had become available to approximately 200 additional cable television systems nationwide, reaching approximately 800,000 subscribers. [38] That cable reach would grow over the next several years: the first heaviest concentrations developed in the Central United States (where WGN's telecasts of Chicago Cubs baseball, Chicago Bulls basketball and The Bozo Show became highly popular) and gradually expanded to encompass most of the nation by the mid-1980s. United Video initially charged prospective cable systems 10¢ per subscriber to receive the WGN-TV signal, the same rate Southern Satellite Systems charged for 24-hour-a-day retransmission of WTBS. WGN Continental Broadcasting and station management originally treated WGN-TV as a "passive" superstation, asserting a neutral position over United Video's national retransmission of its signal and holding no oversight over national promotion of the WGN signal. (This was in contrast to WTBS, which handled nationalized promotional responsibilities rather than leaving those duties to its satellite carrier, as WGN had done.) This allowed WGN Continental/Tribune Broadcasting to continue paying for syndicated programming and advertising at local rates rather than those comparable to other national networks. Tribune was also not directly compensated by United Video for their retransmission or promotion of WGN's signal, though under compulsory license provisions applying to out-of-market stations through the Copyright Act of 1976 (further defined through the formation of the Copyright Royalty Tribunal in 1982), WGN-TV did receive royalty payments made by cable and satellite systems retransmitting the national WGN feed to the United States Copyright Office for retransmission of any copyrighted programming over which it held ownership (including news, public affairs, children's and sports programs). [39] [40] [41]
Since United Video did not seek the Tribune Company's permission to relay the WGN-TV signal, for many years, WGN and United Video's relationship was described as being "not particularly friendly," going as far as Tribune even attempting legal challenges to stop retransmission of its signal, even though a Copyright Act exemption clause regarding "passive" carriers in the compulsory license statute of Section 111 effectively defined that satellite carriers were not required to seek direct the express permission of a television station or its licensee (such as WGN-TV/WGN Continental Broadcasting) to redistribute out-of-market broadcast signals. Publicly, Daniel T. Pecaro, president of WGN-TV at the time, opined that the station was "very honored [it was] selected" by United Video and the three other carriers granted redistribution but noted that the station would "continue to serve our Chicagoland communities." [30] [42] For about eleven years afterward, the national WGN-TV signal carried the same programming schedule as that seen in the Chicago area, except in instances where Chicago Bulls basketball games were prohibited from airing on the national feed due to NBA restrictions on superstation broadcasts. The national feed also used the same on-air branding as the Chicago area signal (which was referred to on-air at the time as either "Channel 9" or "WGN Channel 9") until 1997, when it became known as simply "WGN" outside Chicago (although it retained the varied forms of the WGN logo wordmark until 2008); in print and off-air promotional advertisements, however, United Video marketed the service as "WGN, The Chicago SuperChannel" (from 1982 to 1987) and later, on an alternative basis, "WGN/UV" (from 1987 to 1993).
On February 10, 1981, WGN-TV began using the satellite feed's audio subcarrier signal to transmit programming schedules delivered to the Electronic Program Guide (EPG) service (later Prevue Guide and now the entertainment-based Pop, and operated by United Video's Trakker Inc. unit at the time) in a 2400 bit/s data stream over the satellite feed's vertical blanking interval (VBI) to local cable providers receiving the schedule information to the EPG's proprietary computer units. However, despite being notified that WGN would be conducting tests of the programming information teletext, United Video chose to substitute the material with teletext content from its Dow Jones business news service; its repurposing of the VBI became the subject of a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Tribune Broadcasting against United Video in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois that April, alleging that it retransmitted the station's prime time newscast, The Nine O'Clock News (now titled WGN News at Nine), as well as other WGN-TV programs in a "mutilated and altered" fashion to use profitable teletext content from the Dow Jones service in a manner which resulted in United Video exercising direct control over the content in violation of Section 111(a) (3) of the 1976 Copyright Act and in interference with an agreement between WGN-TV and Albuquerque, New Mexico, cable provider Albuquerque Cable Television Inc. to supply the EPG teletext to subscribers. United Video contended that the Copyright Act's passive carrier rules applied to how it used the VBI, also maintaining that transmitting extraneous material to cable systems did not constitute a public performance and the teletext material was a separate transmission from the copyrighted program since it required a standalone decoder to view it over television receivers. [43] [44]
On October 8, 1981, District Court Judge Susan Getzendanner denied injunctive relief to WGN Continental Broadcasting and dismissed the case against United Video, citing that it was not required to carry the station's teletext transmission. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Northern District of Illinois reversed Getzendanner's decision on August 12, 1982, ordering in a narrowly defined ruling that United Video must retransmit WGN-TV's VBI Teletext where the transmission was directly related to and part of the 9:00 p.m. news simulcast. The court pointed out that "purely passive [intermediary]" carriers cannot make any changes or outright remove any part of the copyrighted transmission and that United Video had no grounds to claim exemption from copyright liability as the definition of what the Copyright Act constitutes as a public performance was broad enough to encompass indirect transmission through cable systems that received the WGN satellite feed. [45] [46]
In 1985, Tribune Broadcasting began providing a direct microwave relay link of the WGN-TV signal to United Video to serve as a contingency feed to allow United access to WGN programming in the event of any problems with the microwave link-up. Separate national advertising or per inquiry ads also began to be inserted over the satellite feed in place of local advertisements intended for broadcast in the Chicago market (which, with a few exceptions, became exclusively carried by channel 9 locally). This also allowed the station to increase the amount of advertising revenue it accrued by charging separate rates for the Chicago-area signal and a higher fee for advertisers purchasing airtime on the national signal, and offering advertisers exclusive commercial avails for either the Chicago-based audience or the national cable audience, or uniform avails for both the national and local audiences. Despite the feed restructuring, most of the shows viewable over WGN-TV in the Chicago area continued to air nationally over the satellite signal. In July 1987, United Video began transmitting the WGN superstation feed in stereo; all WGN-TV-produced programming was made available to participating systems in the format, while other programming was initially transmitted in synthesized stereo audio. [47]
On May 18, 1988, the FCC reinstituted the Syndication Exclusivity Rights Rule ("SyndEx"), a rule – previously repealed by the agency in July 1980 – that allows television stations to claim local exclusivity over syndicated programs and requires cable systems to either black out or secure an agreement with the claimant station or a syndication distributor to continue carrying a claimed program through an out-of-market station. [48] [49] [50] [51] To indemnify cable systems from potential blackouts, Tribune and United Video began to secure national retransmission rights to certain programs featured on the WGN Chicago signal—particularly, local and some syndicated programs as well as sporting events not subjected to league restrictions pertaining to the number of games that could be shown on out-of-market stations annually—and substitute programs not subjected to exclusivity claims—mainly syndicated reruns of recent and older comedy and drama series, select first-run syndicated shows, and acquired theatrical feature and made-for-television films not shown on the Chicago feed—to ensure that the national feed would not face blackout issues. United Video also made contingency plans to put alternative programming on a second satellite to which it could switch to absolve any holes in the WGN-TV national feed's schedule by leasing part-time space for the affected time periods. [52]
When the Syndex rules went into effect on January 1, 1990, United Video formally launched a separate national feed of WGN that featured the WGN-TV-transmitted and separately acquired programs cleared for "full-signal" carriage. However, it continued to run much of the same programs as the Chicago broadcast signal with limited programming differentiation from its parent station for most of the 1990s. (This feed was originally structured similarly to the concurrently launched WWOR EMI Service feed of WWOR-TV, albeit with a larger amount of shared programming.) Of the four United Video-distributed superstations, WGN was the only one to have its national coverage expand post-Syndex, adding 2.2 million households with cable or satellite service to its total reach by July 1990; some systems also began to swap out New York City-area rivals WPIX and WWOR in favor of offering the WGN superstation feed in the years immediately following that feed's launch as it offered fewer blackout-subjected programs than other affected superstations. The national feed's distribution gradually expanded further to direct broadcast satellite through agreements with DirecTV, Dish Network and Primestar throughout the 1990s. (A separate feed of WGN-TV was also uplinked in March 1989 by Netlink – a carrier firm operated by cable television provider Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI), which began distributing WGN as part of a satellite program package to C-band dishes in October 1987 – for distribution to home satellite dish owners.) [53] [54] [55] [56] [57] In January 1992, WGN-TV signed an agreement with A.C. Nielsen Co. to provide monthly measurements of the station's national audience (separate from its ratings tallies for its Chicago viewership) through Nielsen's cable network measurement service.
Affiliation with The WB; transfer from United Video to Tribune
Former logo as WGN Superstation, used from 2001 to 2002.
Former logo as Superstation WGN, used from 2002 to 2008.
On November 2, 1993, Time Warner announced the formation of The WB Television Network, a venture developed in partnership with the Tribune Company (which, prior to acquiring an 11% interest in August 1995, was a non-equity partner in the new network) and former Fox network executive Jamie Kellner (who would serve as the original president of and would hold a minority ownership stake in The WB). Tribune committed six of the seven independent stations it owned at the time to become the network's charter affiliates; however, it initially exempted the WGN-TV Chicago signal from the agreement, as station management had expressed concerns about how the network's plans to expand its prime time and daytime programming would affect WGN's sports broadcast rights and the impact that the potential of having to phase them out to fulfill network commitments would have on the superstation feed's appeal to cable and satellite providers elsewhere around the United States. [58] [59] [60] [61] [62] Tribune would reverse course on December 3, 1993, reaching a separate agreement with Time Warner to allow WGN-TV to become The WB's charter affiliate for the Chicago market and allow the WGN superstation feed to serve as a de facto national network feed intended for American media markets that did not initially have a local affiliate; this would bide The WB enough time to fill remaining gaps in affiliate coverage in "white area" regions that lacked a standalone independent station following its launch. In exchange, Time Warner agreed to reduce the network's initial program offerings to one night per week (from two) to limit conflicts with WGN's sports broadcasts. The superstation feed, which reached 37% of the country by that time, would extend the network's initial coverage to 73% of all U.S. households that had at least one television set. [63] [64] [65] [66]
The WGN-TV local and superstation feeds became WB charter affiliates when the network launched on January 11, 1995. (In the case of the Chicago signal, this marked the first time that WGN-TV was affiliated with a major broadcast network since DuMont ceased operations in August 1956.) The WGN cable agreement resulted in The WB becoming the second American broadcast television network to use a cable-originated service to provide extended coverage in designated "white areas" without over-the-air affiliate clearances, and one of three network-to-cable undertakings stewarded by Jamie Kellner. As The WB was under development, Kellner was in process of developing The WeB, a proposed national WB cable feed for smaller markets based upon a service that he launched as President of the Fox Broadcasting Company, Foxnet, which operated from June 1991 until September 2006. The use of WGN as a national relay feed gave The WB an early advantage over the United Paramount Network (UPN) – another fledgling network that made its national debut on January 16, 1995, as a joint venture between Chris-Craft/United Television and Paramount Television – which declined to allow the WWOR EMI Service to act as its national carrier despite UPN having similar gaps in its broadcast affiliate coverage initially. The WGN superstation feed accounted for roughly 18% of the national coverage that The WB had at launch, with the rest of the network's initial 62% total reach coming from the 60 broadcast affiliates (including WGN-TV) that were willing to adhere to its reverse compensation plan for prospective affiliates. In some areas where cable systems did not carry the superstation feed and maintenance of a local WB affiliate was not yet possible, satellite distribution was the only way viewers could see the network's programming over WGN. (The WGN national feed served as the default WB affiliate for residents in 152 markets and the entirety of 21 U.S. states—Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming—at varying periods of time up through the launch of The WeB.) United Video intended to provide an alternate feed of WGN with substitute programming for markets that had a WB-affiliated station; however, no such measure was taken, creating network duplication in markets where over-the-air WB affiliates were forced to compete with the WGN cable feed. [66] [67] [68]
The WGN superstation feed carried The WB's prime time lineup from the latter's launch, and added the companion Kids' WB children's programming block when it debuted on September 11, 1995. Conversely, in the Chicago market, WGN-TV chose only to air the network's prime time lineup, and exercised a right of first refusal to decline Kids' WB to offer a local morning newscast and an afternoon block of syndicated sitcoms aimed at a family audience on weekdays and a mix of locally produced news, public affairs and children's programs as well as paid programs on weekend mornings; this cleared the way for Weigel Broadcasting to cut a separate deal to air Kids' WB programs locally over group flagship WCIU-TV (channel 26, now a CW affiliate), an independent station that ran the block Monday through Saturdays from September 1995 until WGN-TV began clearing the block on its schedule in September 2004. [69] [70] [71] As The WB's initial program offerings ran on Wednesdays for its first nine months of operation and its prime time schedule would not expand to six nights a week until September 1999, the superstation feed filled the 8:00 to 10:00 pm. Eastern Time slot on nights without WB network programming with either sports telecasts from WGN-TV that were cleared for national broadcast – which, as The WB expanded its programming to other nights over a four-year period beginning with the September 1995 launch of its Sunday lineup, would result in pre-emptions of the network's programs until later in the week – or, as with most over-the-air WB affiliates during the network's early years, theatrical feature films acquired via the syndication market. [72]
By 1995, the WGN superstation feed was available to about 85% of all American cable systems, reaching approximately 35 million households; however, some distribution gaps remained well into the 2000s in parts of the Northeastern and Western United States (including in select major markets like Pittsburgh and the immediate New York City area). [42] In May 1995, United Video shifted retransmission responsibilities for the WGN, WPIX and KTLA superstation feeds to its newly incorporated UVTV subsidiary. [73] In 1997, Tele-Communications Inc. and Tribune discussed a proposal to sell a 50% ownership stake in the WGN superstation feed to TCI – which, in January 1996, acquired a controlling interest in United Video, eventually expanding its share in the company to an approximate 73% equity and 93% stock and voting interest by January 1998 – and convert it into a basic cable channel (similar to what WTBS had done that same year and similar to Tribune's conversion of WGN America into a basic service that began in 2014). The proposal would have also seen TCI provide additional programming (including library content from distributors through which parent company Liberty Media had held investments) and receive subscriber fees paid by participating cable systems. This proposal ultimately did not yield a deal, with Tribune and United Video maintaining stewardship of the national channel. [74]
Into the late 1990s, The WB began to expand its local broadcast coverage in American media markets that had previously relied on the WGN national feed to receive the network's programming; it signed affiliation agreements with local broadcast stations (including UPN charter affiliates, leftover independents, former noncommercial stations adopting an entertainment format, and dual affiliations with stations already affiliated with other networks [such as UPN]) within the top-100 media markets after its launch, while coverage in the 110 smallest markets was achieved through the September 1998 launch of The WeB (subsequently renamed The WB 100+ Station Group), a packaged feed of WB network and syndicated programs provided to participating cable-based affiliates. With local availability becoming less of an issue and with exclusivity protections being granted by the network to its affiliates in specific markets by this time, on January 27, 1999, Time Warner and Tribune mutually agreed to cease the stopgap WB programming relay over the WGN superstation feed effective that fall. On October 6, when the WGN superstation feed formally stopped carrying WB network programming, Kids' WB programming on weekday mornings and afternoons and on Sunday mornings was replaced with syndicated series, while feature films replaced The WB's prime time programs, resulting in the superstation's schedule more so resembling an independent station than a general entertainment cable network due to the presence of local programming from WGN-TV. [75] [76] [77] [78] [79] [80] The removal of WB programs from the superstation feed reduced The WB's potential audience by 10 million households, and was cited as the reason behind an estimated 19% decline in the network's season-to-season household audience for the 1999–2000 season, which saw The WB consequently fall to sixth place (behind UPN) in the Nielsen ratings. [81] For similar reasons to those that necessitated the channel's decision to remove WB programming, WGN America also did not carry any programming from The CW when WGN-TV became its Chicago charter affiliate upon that network's September 2006 launch, as that network is widely available throughout the United States via over-the-air broadcast stations and affiliations with digital subchannels and local cable outlets (including through The CW Plus in smaller markets) when that network launched in September 2006.
Between 1998 and 2005, the amount of common programming shown on both the Chicago signal and national superstation feeds steadily decreased, an issue that continued well after the WGN America rebrand. Comparatively, approximately 50% of the programs seen on WGN consisted of those originating on the Chicago feed that was cleared for "full-signal" carriage by the national feed; this proportion of common programming dropped to around 30% by 2005 through the prior removal of WB programming and the overall schedule beginning to rely more on programs acquired specifically for national carriage as syndicators increasingly insisted on exclusivity protection for their series and film packages and were unwilling to license the rights to higher-profile syndicated programs to the superstation feed, believing that it would be more lucrative to license those programs to individual stations.
On July 12, 2000, Gemstar International Group Limited acquired TV Guide, Inc. (which United Video Satellite Group renamed itself following its 1999 purchase of TV Guide magazine from News Corporation), subsequently changing its name to Gemstar–TV Guide International. In April 2001, Tribune Broadcasting purchased a majority interest in UVTV – one of three satellite carrier units, along with Superstar/Netlink Group and Netlink USA, that were operated by the company – from TV Guide, Inc. unit of Gemstar–TV Guide (which was refocusing its assets around TV Guide magazine, the TV Guide Interactive interactive program guide platform and the TV Guide Channel) for $106 million in cash, shifting responsibility for retransmission, distribution and promotion of the WGN superstation feed to Tribune and effectively transitioning WGN from a "passive" to an "active" superstation, as TBS had been since it was first uplinked in December 1976. (The transaction would be the subject of a 2004 Securities and Exchange Commission securities fraud investigation against co-president Peter Boylan that determined that Gemstar failed to inform investors that Tribune committed to a six-year, $100 million advertising contract with Gemstar in exchange for selling its stake in WGN to Tribune.) [82]
On September 10, 2001, the channel's name was changed to WGN Superstation, in an effort by Tribune Broadcasting to emphasize the channel's national programming prominence; the WGN-TV Chicago signal, meanwhile, continued to use the callsign-only "WGN" branding with the "Channel 9" identification remaining as a sub-brand. On November 11, 2002, the superstation feed underwent another name change, becoming known as Superstation WGN to reflect the strong national standing of the channel; this change coincided with the introduction of the Akzidenz Grotesk "arrow G" logo introduced by WGN-TV at that time (and used until May 15, 2017), which was stylized for the superstation feed's logo design to also incorporate an oval with a die-cut "S" emblem to represent its superstation status.
On April 1, 2007, Chicago-based real estate investor Sam Zell announced plans to purchase the Tribune Company in a leveraged buyout worth $8.2 billion, under which Tribune employees were awarded stock and given effective ownership of the company. The transaction and concurring privatization of Tribune was completed upon termination of the company's stock at the close of trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on December 20, 2007, at which time Zell formally became the company's chairman and chief executive officer (CEO). [83] [84] [85]
