WLS-TV


WLS-TV, virtual channel 7, is an ABC owned-and-operated television station licensed to Chicago, Illinois, United States. The station is owned by the ABC Owned Television Stations subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company. WLS-TV's studios are located on North State Street near the Chicago Theatre in the Chicago Loop, and it shares transmitter facilities with Aurora-licensed UniMás owned-and-operated station WXFT-DT atop the Willis Tower on South Wacker Drive.

History

The station first signed on the air on September 17, 1948 as WENR-TV. It was the third television station to sign on in the Chicago market behind WGN-TV, which debuted six months earlier in April, and WBKB, which changed from an experimental station to a commercial operation in September 1946. As one of the original ABC-owned stations on channel 7, it was the second station to begin operations after New York City, and before Detroit, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
The station's original call letters were taken from co-owned radio station WENR, which served as an affiliate of the ABC Radio Network.
In February 1953, ABC merged with United Paramount Theatres, the former theater division of Paramount Pictures. UPT subsidiary Balaban and Katz owned WBKB. The newly merged American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres, as the company was known then, could not keep both stations because of Federal Communications Commission regulations then enforced that forbade the common ownership of two television stations licensed to the same market. As a result, WBKB's channel 4 license was sold to CBS, which subsequently changed that station's call letters to WBBM-TV; that outlet would move to VHF channel 2 several months later on July 5, 1953. The old WBKB's on-air and behind-the-scenes staff stayed at the new WBBM-TV, while the WBKB call letters and management moved to channel 7.
Sterling "Red" Quinlan served as the station's general manager from the early 1950s to the mid-1960s, and became a giant in early Chicago television. Quinlan was instrumental in starting the careers of Tom Duggan, Frank Reynolds and Bob Newhart. The station courageously aired The Tom Duggan Show in the mid-1950s, which became the most popular show in the Chicago market, far outdrawing other network competition. Channel 7 had its call letters changed to WLS-TV on October 7, 1968, named after WLS Radio, which ABC had wholly owned since 1959 when the network bought the 50% interest it did not already hold in the station from the Prairie Farmer magazine. Ironically, ABC merged WLS with WENR, its shared-time partner, in 1954.
In 1963, Al Parker joined the station as an announcer and worked in that capacity for 26 years. Until his departure, he also served as an announcer for AM Chicago and The Oprah Winfrey Show. He died September 30, 2000 at the age of 74.
WLS-TV had claimed to be "Chicago's first television station" in its sign-ons and sign-offs during for its first three decades, but admitted to its true roots with WENR with its 30th anniversary in 1978.
On January 17, 1984, WLS-TV launched Tele1st, an ABC-owned overnight subscription television service that carried a mix of films and lifestyle programs for four hours per night six days a week after the station's sign-off at 2:00 a.m.; the service was similar in format to competitor ONTV and other over-the-air pay services that existed during the early and mid-1980s. Tele1st was created with the concept of allowing users to record programming for later viewing; therefore, its decoder boxes were designed to unencrypt the signal only with the aid of a VCR. Scrambling codes that were sent to the box and relayed to the VCR were changed on a monthly basis, requiring subscribers to record additional footage airing immediately before and after that night's schedule to retrieve codes to play back the recorded programs properly; this resulted in any recordings being viewable only during that calendar month. Tele1st was deemed a failure, attributing only 4,000 subscribers at its peak, and ceased operations on June 30, 1984.

Digital television

Digital channels

The station's digital signal is multiplexed:
ChannelVideoAspectPSIP Short NameProgramming
7.1720pWLS-DTMain WLS-TV programming / ABC
7.2480iLOCLishLocalish

Prior to February 24, 2011, WLS-DT3 carried ABC 7 News NOW, featuring local news and weather and national/sidebar content from The Local AccuWeather Channel. The ABC O&Os discontinued their Local AccuWeather channels on February 24, 2011, replacing its programming with a letterboxed standard-definition simulcast of their Live Well subchannels, though AccuWeather's content/branding agreement with ABCOTS, including WLS-TV, continued unchanged. WLS-DT3 formerly served as a charter affiliate of Laff diginet from its launch in January 2015. To accommodate the WXFT channel share which took effect in December 2017, WLS-TV discontinued the third Laff subchannel, which shifted over to a subchannel of WXFT's sister station, WGBO-DT2, and reduced the Live Well feed from a reduced-bitrate 720p broadcast to a 480i format.

Analog-to-digital conversion

WLS-TV shut down its analog signal, over VHF channel 7, 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 relocated from its pre-transition UHF channel 52, which was among the high band UHF channels that were removed from broadcast use as a result of the transition, to its analog-era VHF channel 7 for post-transition operations.
WLS operated its digital signal at low power to protect the digital signal of NBC affiliate WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids, Michigan. As a result, many viewers were not able to receive the station. The FCC sent extra personnel to Chicago, Philadelphia and New York City to deal with difficulties in those cities. WLS had received 1,735 calls just by the end of the day on June 12, and an estimated 5,000 calls in total by June 16.
WLS-TV was just one station which needed to increase its signal strength or move its frequency to solve its problems, but a power increase required making sure no other stations were affected. WLS received a two-week experimental permit for a power increase late in June. WLS had also applied for a permit to construct a low-power fill-in digital translator station on UHF channel 32, but abandoned that plan. Eventually the FCC granted it a permit to transmit on a second frequency, UHF channel 44, formerly occupied by WSNS-TV; WLS announced the availability of that frequency on October 31, 2009.
Throughout construction of the new maximized transmitting facilities at the Willis Tower, WLS operated both channels 7 and 44 from its auxiliary facilities at the John Hancock Center under an STA. WLS operated channel 7 as a fill-in translator with a power of 7 kW, and operating their full power operations on channel 44 with a power of 1 MW. Through the use of PSIP technology, both operating frequencies were re-mapped and displayed as virtual channel 7, which would cause some digital tuners to have two versions of virtual channels 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3, while tuning sequentially. In October 2012, WLS-TV completed construction from the Willis Tower and its operating channel 44 at the 1 million watt power level. The station continued its dual-frequency operations until 12:03 p.m. on March 18, 2013 when WLS-TV formally ceased operations on VHF channel 7, leaving UHF channel 44 as its permanent allotment. Since WLS-TV officially moved its full-power operations to channel 44, it is the only ABC-owned station to vacate its former analog allotment for its digital operations and the second ABC O&O to operate its full-power operations on the UHF band, after Fresno sister station KFSN-TV.
On June 12, 2017, WLS-TV's parent company ABC Owned Television Stations and Univision Communications announced they would enter into a channel sharing agreement following the sale of the over-the-air spectrum of UniMás owned-and-operated station WXFT-DT in the FCC's spectrum reallocation auction for $126.1 million on April 13, 2017; as mentioned above, the transition of WXFT to the WLS-TV spectrum occurred eight months later.

Programming

WLS-TV currently airs the Litton's Weekend Adventure educational programming block and the network's political/news discussion program This Week one hour later than most ABC stations due to its weekend morning newscasts. syndicated programs broadcast on WLS-TV include Live with Kelly and Ryan, Inside Edition, Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune.

Station oddities

WLS-TV serves as the local over-the-air broadcaster of Monday Night Football games involving the Chicago Bears, airing simulcasts of the team's ESPN-televised games. Because of this, atypical for a network-owned station outside of breaking news and severe weather coverage necessitating such situations, the station has had to reschedule ABC network programs pre-empted by the telecasts. The preseason and MNF telecasts mark the only NFL games to have aired on WLS-TV since ABC lost the rights to NFL games in 2006; during the regular season, Bears games are rotated between WBBM-TV, WMAQ-TV and especially WFLD. Since 2010, however, it has deferred the right of first refusal due to the popularity and live voting requirements of ABC's Dancing with the Stars, with WCIU-TV carrying the MNF games when the former program's fall season is ongoing.
On December 12, 2014, WLS-TV signed a new five-year broadcast agreement with the Chicago Cubs, in which WLS will televise 25 of the Major League Baseball team's games per year, starting with the 2015 season. The arrangement partially replaces one with WGN-TV, which voluntarily pulled out of its existing broadcast deal with the team for the 2015 season and subsequently agreed to carry a reduced slate of 45 games. The WLS broadcasts are seen on DirecTV's version of MLB Extra Innings, and the feed provided is the WLS signal seen in the Chicago market.
As ABC has a limited sports programming schedule during the Major League Baseball season prior to September, the station mainly carries the team's weekend daytime games in order to limit pre-emptions of the network's prime time programming.
WLS-TV also airs select Chicago Bulls games via NBA on ABC.

News operation

WLS-TV broadcasts 41 hours, 25 minutes of locally produced newscasts each week. WLS-TV also contracts with iHeartMedia to provide weather forecasts for their Chicago market stations, including WLIT-FM, WEBG, WVAZ, WKSC-FM, and WGCI-FM.

News department history

In 1969, WLS-TV adopted the Eyewitness News format that the other ABC owned-and-operated stations began implementing in the late 1960s, after the news format was popularized when it originated at New York City flagship WABC-TV. Beginning in 1968, the station's main evening newscasts were co-anchored by Fahey Flynn, a bowtie-wearing broadcaster who had spent the previous 15 years at WBBM-TV; and Joel Daly, who was hired away by WLS from WJW-TV in Cleveland in 1967. The duo served as the anchors of the station's 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. newscasts until Flynn's death in August 1983. In 1970, the two were joined by John Drury, who helmed the 5:00 p.m. newscast. By 1973, WLS' Eyewitness News broadcasts surpassed NBC-owned WMAQ-TV 's newscasts to become Chicago's top-rated news operation, a lead it held until WBBM-TV surpassed channel 7 for the top spot in 1979. For much of the 1970s and 1980s, it waged a spirited battle for second place in the Chicago news ratings between its two main competitors.
By 1983, a disastrous anchor change had dropped channel 7 into third place. This prompted two major changes to the station's management; ABC brought in Dennis Swanson from WLS-TV's Los Angeles sister station KABC-TV to serve as the station's new general manager. Swanson, in turn, hired Bill Applegate as the station's news director. In addition, ABC commissioned Frank Gari to compose an updated version of the Cool Hand Luke "Tar Sequence" theme widely associated with the Eyewitness News format. The result was "News Series 2000," a theme package that was quickly picked up by other ABC O&Os and affiliates.
Swanson was instrumental in hiring Oprah Winfrey to host its then low-rated morning talk show, AM Chicago, in 1983. Within a year, the program had moved to first place in the ratings. AM Chicago entered into national syndication in 1986 and was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show. Channel 7 was the flagship station for the show, and it, along with most of ABC's other owned-and-operated stations, carried it until it went out of production in September 2011. Swanson also re-hired lead anchor John Drury, who had left for WGN-TV in 1979; and Floyd Kalber, who had led WMAQ-TV to the top of the ratings in the 1960s. Drury and Mary Ann Childers were a popular anchor team at WLS-TV during the 1980s and 1990s, accompanied by weather anchor Steve Deshler and sports anchor Tim Weigel. In March 1986, channel 7 passed WBBM-TV as the highest-rated news station in Chicago. It has held the lead ever since, aside from a brief period when WBBM-TV forged a tie for first in the late 1980s.
In 1992, the station replaced the "News Series 2000" package with a new news music package, also produced by Gari, called "News Series 2000 Plus", which has remained in use by WLS ever since and was updated in 2013. In 1996, WLS-TV dropped the Eyewitness News brand after 26 years, in favor of the network-centric ABC 7 News; the move was part of a standard branding effort imposed by ABC across its owned-and-operated stations which saw the incorporation of the ABC name into their local brands.
WLS-TV officially debuted a new street-side studio at its North State Street facility on April 10, 2006, during the station's morning newscast, although the station had begun broadcasting its newscasts from that studio two days earlier on April 8. On the weekend of April 29–30, 2006, WLS-TV upgraded its news helicopter with a high definition camera, rebranding it as "Chopper 7 HD". On January 6, 2007, WLS-TV became the first Chicago television station to broadcast all of its local programming—including newscasts—in high definition, although most remote field footage remained in widescreen standard definition at the time. Since then, WLS-TV upgraded most of its field footage to HD, although some field reports remain in widescreen SD.
On December 23, 2007, a Mazda minivan drove through a reinforced studio window at the State Street Studio two minutes into the 10:00 p.m. newscast, startling anchor Ravi Baichwal on air and creating a 20° draft as the glass shattered upon the car's impact; no one was injured in the crash. Evanston resident Gerald Richardson was subsequently charged with felony damage to property for the incident. On November 11, 2012, WLS-TV expanded its Sunday 8:00 a.m. newscast from 1½ to two hours, leading into ABC's This Week. The 8:00 a.m. portion of the Saturday morning newscast was expanded to two hours from 8:00 to 10:00 a.m. on August 24, 2013. Nearly a week later on August 30, WLS-TV discontinued its hour-long weekday 11:00 a.m. newscast after 21 years, and replaced it on September 2 with Windy City Live, whose original 9:00 a.m. slot became occupied by Live! with Kelly and Michael when it moved to WLS from WGN-TV on that date. With the move and the midday newscast's cancellation, news and weather cut-ins were incorporated into Windy City Live.
On October 26, 2013, WLS-TV reintroduced the Eyewitness News brand, as part of an overall rebranding of its newscasts that included new graphics and a modernized update to the "Stimulus" theme. In an interview with media columnist Robert Feder, WLS-TV president/general manager John Idler cited the reasoning behind the restoration of the Eyewitness News brand, was that it " resonated strongly with the Chicago market," despite being dropped by the station 17 years earlier. On November 2, 2013, WLS expanded the early block of its weekend morning newscasts, with the extension of its hour-long 6:00 a.m. newscast on Saturdays and Sundays to two hours at 5:00 a.m.
On February 10, 2014, WLS-TV entered into a partnership agreement with the Chicago Sun-Times to include the use of the station's weather team in the newspaper's weather section, replacing WMAQ-TV, whose previous partnership ended the day before; in addition, the station would air a 'look ahead' of the newspaper's front page and stories, with the Sun-Times promoting WLS's newscasts and programming in turn.
On December 14, 2014, WLS-TV entered into a news share agreement with independent station WCIU-TV to produce a weeknight-only 7:00 p.m. newscast titled ABC 7 Eyewitness News at 7:00 on The U; the program debuted on January 12, 2015, and is the fifth newscast produced by ABC O&O for a separately owned station in the station's home market.
On June 27, 2016, WLS-TV revived its 11:00 a.m. newscasts for the first time since 2013, becoming the fourth television station in Chicago to do so; which completes against with WMAQ-TV, WBBM-TV, and WGN-TV. In June 2016, after several years of unsuccessful syndicated talk show replacements for the cancelled All My Children, the station moved General Hospital to 2 p.m., then Windy City Live to 1:00 p.m. to accommodate the 11 a.m. newscast, with a replay of the latter late night after Nightline.
On July 29, 2019, It was announced that WLS-TV would end its news share agreement with WCIU-TV, ending the weeknight program for that station, the 7:00 p.m. newscast ABC 7 Eyewitness News at 7:00 on The U after 4 years, with the final broadcast on August 30 of that same year. The mutual parting of ways came as WCIU would become the market's CW affiliate on September 1, leaving no room for the newscast otherwise on the station's schedule.

Ratings

According to the Nielsen local news ratings for the February 2011 sweeps period, WLS-TV remained in first place overall, with the 10 p.m. newscast getting a 9.7 rating share, down a tenth of a point from a 9.8 during the same time the previous year. The station remained in second place for its prime-time lead-in.

On-air staff

Notable current on-air staff