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WSNS-TV
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| WSNS-TV | |
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| Chicago, Illinois | |
| Branding | Telemundo Chicago |
| Channels | Analog: 44 (UHF) Digital: 45 (UHF) |
| Affiliations | Telemundo |
| Owner | NBC Universal |
| Founded | April 5, 1970 |
| Call letters meaning | Essaness (former owner) |
| Former affiliations | Independent (1970-1980) ON-TV Subscription Television (1980-1985) Spanish International Network (1985-1987) Univision (1987-1989) |
| Website | www.telemundochicago.com |
WSNS-TV 44 is the Telemundo affiliate in Chicago, Illinois. It is owned by NBC Universal. Its schedule consists of Spanish newscasts, talk shows, movies and dramas from the Telemundo network.
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The station signed on in April 5, 1970. Harriscope owned 50% of the station; the rest was owned by a consortium, among which was the Essaness TV Corp. (from which the station's call letters arose). The transmitter and small studio were located on the 97th floor of the John Hancock Building.
The station programmed an all-news format in its early days. During the day, the station aired an alphanumeric feed of news reports supplied from wire services. The lower third of the screen displayed a commercial banner for Continental Bank, while elevator music played continuously. Every 7 minutes a 4 sided board would twist in front of a camera to show headlines, traffic reports, sports scores and birthdays.
The first program added to the format was the 10 minute long "Underground News." It began on July 1, at 11:50 p.m. when the AP wire feed changed to local news, produced and directed by Howie Samuelsohn, and written by Linda Freedman, the banner ad changed to "Head Imports" and the music changed to "The Grateful Dead." The content of the show revealed news of and by the Anti-War Movement. On November 16, 1970, the station moved to its newly constructed studios on Grant Place in Chicago's Lincoln Park (Since been demolished since at least 2002). With a staff consisting of local talent and a team of recent graduates from Southern Illinois University, the station went "live." One of the first live-on-tape programs was Underground News with Chuck Collins. Chuck was a 21 year old recent graduate in political science.
To secure a mattress store advertiser, the station ran a news show titled Heart of the News, which featured an anchorwoman reading the news in a provocative manner on a heart-shaped bed. [1]. That program was short-lived, but the second anchorwoman, Judith Wright, was the forerunner to Jon Stewart's The Daily Show, as she would make funny and ironic commentaries on news stories picked off the AP wire during the day. Judith Wright later went on to become a Ph.D. geochemist, an ironic twist for a young starlet. She later invented a method of using fish bones to clean-up heavy metal contamination in water and soil.
By the mid 1970s, the station was running a general entertainment schedule. It was the "also ran" station in the market, running a lot of older cartoons, some off-network sitcoms, old movies and religious shows.
WSNS did, however, obtain the broadcast rights to the Chicago White Sox baseball team in 1973 from WFLD and aired their games until 1980. The White Sox games were announced by legendary play-by-play man Harry Caray during that time, and the games were produced by WGN-TV.
They also aired Chicago Bulls basketball games from 1973-76.And also aired Chicago Cougars WHA hockey from 1972-75. From 1976 until 1980, WSNS aired the NHL Game of the Week on Mondays, and started airing Chicago Black Hawks road games from 1978-1980. Throught the 1970s, WSNS aired college basketball featuring the Purdue Boilermakers, the Indiana Hoosiers, and in the late 1970s, the DePaul Blue Demons.
In 1980, the station added ON-TV subscription television programming after 7 p.m. daily. By 1980 it was running subscription TV after about 5 p.m. By 1982, it was subscription TV for most of the day with religion a few hours a day. In 1983, WSNS went to ON-TV 24/7.
In 1985, following public backlash against WSNS and ON-TV for the airing of slightly scrambled pornographic movies during daytime hours, and ensuing lawsuits which dogged the station during ON-TV's entire tenure (then continued for years afterward), WSNS dropped ON-TV and returned to a general entertainment schedule, albeit not nearly as popular as it was in the pre-ON-TV days. In July, WSNS became an affiliate of the Spanish International Network (which became Univision a few years later). WSNS then switched to Telemundo in 1989, and a majority controlling stake (74.5 percent) of the station was sold to Telemundo in 1996 (with Essaness retaining a 25.5 percent stake).
When NBC purchased Telemundo in 2001, WSNS became part of the newly enlarged conglomerate, creating Chicago's first commercial duopoly between two full-power television stations. Two years later, NBC became the sole owner of WSNS when it bought out Essaness' stake in the station. It currently shares its broadcast facilities with sister station WMAQ-TV.
- In the 1970s, the Emergency Broadcast System required many stations to shut down in the event of a national emergency. When a false alarm took place on February 20, 1971, WSNS was the only station to take the alert seriously and shut down.
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Local television stations Local cable television channels Past local cable television channels Defunct aerial pay television channels |