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III. Chicago Made Broadcast History
III. Chicago Made Broadcast History
Chicago has played a pivotal role in US broadcasting. Chicago broadcasting began in November 1921 when radio station KYW went on the air. KYW was licensed to Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company and operated jointly with Commonwealth Edison, the local electric company. By 1923, there were 20 Chicago radio stations. Station owners included the Chicago Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, local papers owned by William Randolph Hearst, the City of Chicago, then-mayor William Hale Thompson, Sears and Roebuck, the Chicago Federation of Labor and the Moody Bible Institute. At least three stations thrived providing foreign-language programming.
The city emerged as a broadcasting center because its first radio stations, thanks to geography, were heard from the eastern seaboard to the Rockies and beyond. Its broadcasting flourished when Chicago became a central switching point for transcontinental network lines, allowing the city's production facilities to re-feed programming to the various time zones with relative economy in the days before audio and videotape.
Chicago’s WGN Radio (720 AM) went on the air in 1924, its call letters reflecting the Chicago Tribune’s renowned slogan, "World’s Greatest Newspaper." The station was an innovator from the start. It was first to broadcast the World Series, the Indianapolis 500 and the Kentucky Derby, and broke new ground by introducing microphones in the courtroom during the famous 1925 Scopes "monkey trial" in Tennessee.
The extension of AT&T's network lines to the West Coast in November 1928 turned Chicago into a national radio production center. Locally produced prime-time shows like Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll's Amos 'n' Andy and Marion and Jim Jordan's Fibber McGee and Molly were among the nation's most popular. Chicago's network output was most substantial during the daytime, beginning with Don McNeill's Breakfast Club (1933–1968), and continuing with hours of soap operas, a genre pioneered in Chicago. But Chicago rapidly lost its status as a network radio production center following the end of World War II. Network radio's departure left a substantial pool of underutilized talent.
The completion of coaxial cable linking the East Coast and Midwest in January 1949 turned Chicago into the origination point of some of early television's most memorable programs. Critics called the programming the “Chicago School of Television.” The “Chicago School” was noted for its original ideas, inventive production techniques and significant contributions to the development of the new visual medium. Technically innovative on the one hand, simple and straightforward on the other, the “Chicago School” worked at creating inventive programs different from both New York's theatrical offerings or Hollywood's screenplay based productions.
As critically acclaimed as it proved to be, elements of the Chicago School's decline were seen as early as 1950. Emerging videotape technology meant that Chicago's studios were no longer necessary for live network broadcasts. Chicago programs were shortened and/or removed from network schedules. Key personnel left Chicago to pursue more lucrative careers in New York and Los Angeles and, in 1953, with the opening of coast-to-coast network cable, there was less and less need for Chicago productions. In 1953, thirteen network programs originated from Chicago. By 1955, no Chicago produced programs appeared on the DuMont network. CBS and NBC had no Chicago network originations except occasional newscasts and a network radio farm program. Increasingly Chicago's commercial stations directed their resources toward local news coverage. However, children remained a key target of local programming for shows like Garfield Goose and Friend and Bozo's Circus.
WGN-TV signed on in April 1948. After short-term affiliations with both CBS and DuMont, channel 9 programmed as an independent, non-network station. Three months after it began commercial operation, WGN-TV claimed an audience of 4,499,126. The station programmed about 45 hours per week, seven days a week. This broke down to 30% studio, 18% film, and 52% remote. Not surprisingly, channel 9 was big on sports right from the beginning. Coverage included home games of both the Chicago Cubs and the Chicago White Sox, Northwestern football, wrestling, and amateur boxing.
Chicago's radio stations searched for new identities in the post-network era. In 1960, one station abandoned its rural audience and adopted a fast-paced top-40 format; another station soon followed suit. One station experimented with an all-talk format, then shifted to all news. In the 1970s music, for the most part, moved to the FM band. Paul Harvey was Chicago's lone network radio personality delivering daily news and commentary.
On the television side, long after satellite dishes supplanted the network lines that once made Chicago a broadcasting hub, tens of millions of Americans continued to watch Chicago-made programs, thanks to the growing popularity of syndicated daytime television talk shows. Phil Donahue pioneered the genre. Oprah Winfrey thrived in it. Jenny Jones and Jerry Springer made it controversial.