WFLD
Encyclopedia : W : WF : WFL : WFLD
WFLD-TV is an owned-and-operated television station of the News Corporation-owned Fox Broadcasting Company, based in Chicago, Illinois. The station operates on channel 32, though it is identified on the air as simply "Fox Chicago." WFLD is co-owned with WPWR-TV (channel 50), Chicago's UPN affiliate. WFLD's transmitter sits on top of the John Hancock Center.
WFLD is a typical Fox station with about 35 to 40 hours a week of news along with syndicated first run talk/court/reality shows, off-network sitcoms, Fox's primetime network programmimg, and sports.
History
The station began life on January 4, 1966, from its downtown Chicago studios. Its founding owners were Field Enterprises, which also owned the Chicago Sun-Times and, most notably, the Marshall Field's department store chain. The station was christened the "Station of Tomorrow" by the Sun-Times in an April 1966 article because of its innovative technical developments in broadcasting its signal.Field Enterprises sold a majority ownership in WFLD to Kaiser Broadcasting in 1972, and the two companies' new partnership would see WFLD joining Kaiser's stable of UHF independent stations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Detroit. In 1977, Kaiser ended the partnership by selling its share of the stations back to Field Enterprises, with Field regaining 100-percent ownership of channel 32. In 1983, Field sold WFLD to Metromedia as part of a company-wide liquidation. Metromedia's television stations, including WFLD, were sold to the News Corporation in 1986, and they formed the core of the new Fox Broadcasting Company.
From the late 1960s to the 1980s, WFLD carried a wide variety of syndicated series, movies, and local public affairs programming. To counter-program against its more established VHF rivals, channel 32 offered documentaries, adult dramas, westerns, and live sports, though for much of the time it trailed WGN-TV (channel 9) in the ratings among Chicago's independent stations until the late 1970s. When it won bids to shows such as M*A*S*H, All In The Family, and Happy Days, the station finally beat WGN-TV in the ratings, and the two stations went head to head throughout the 1980s.
In 1968, WFLD-TV acquired broadcast rights to the Chicago White Sox baseball team from WGN-TV, carrying them initially until 1972, and again from 1982 to 1989. During the 1980s WFLD also aired games of the NBA's Chicago Bulls, until WGN-TV acquired broadcast rights to both teams in 1990 (Chicago-area attorney and real estate investor Jerry Reinsdorf owns both franchises). WFLD was also noteworthy as the longtime home of the local B-movie program Svengoolie, which currently airs on WCIU-TV (channel 26).
Following the 1986 sale to the new Fox ownership, the station continued to compete aggressively in the market. Now known on-air as Fox 32, the station expanded its news presence as well. In addition to its 9 p.m. newscast, which it has had since the early 1980s, the station started airing a morning newscast called Fox Thing in the Morning (now Fox News in the Morning) in place of the morning cartoon block.
The afternoon cartoon block, which became Fox Kids by 1992, continued on the station, as well as the top-rated off-network sitcoms in the evening. It also added more first-run talk shows and court shows. When Fox ended the weekday kids block in January of 2002, WFLD added more first-run reality and talk shows to the lineup.
In the mid-1990s, after many years of being known on the air as "Fox 32" (or even "Fox Thirty-Two"), the station rebranded itself as "Fox Chicago" due to the fact that many Chicagoans watch WFLD via cable (channel 12 or channel three on most area cable systems). Fox purchased WPWR-TV in 2002, and WPWR's operations were integrated into WFLD's facilities in downtown Chicago.
In January 2003, WFLD dropped the Fox Saturday morning cartoon block, now outsourced by Fox to producer "4 Kids TV", and the programs now air on WPWR in the same four-hour time block. In the near future, WFLD will be adding a Saturday morning newscast in its place from 6 to 9 AM (which for now syndicated kid shows and informercials air). WFLD is the first of the original six Fox-owned stations (owned prior to the New World stations purchase) to drop Fox's Saturday children's programming.
WFLD's news operation, "Fox News Chicago", has less of a tabloid feel than the news on other Fox stations. This is probably because Walter Jacobson, longtime anchor at WBBM-TV, was its main anchor from 1993 to 2005. However, it is much flashier than the other news operations in town.
On May 7, 2006, WFLD adopted a new look for its newscasts, including new theme music and graphics, a new broadcast set, as well as a new station logo. Similar in style to the Fox News Channel, it already is in use at WNYW New York and WTVT Tampa-St. Petersburg, among others. The campaign is expected to spread to other Fox owned-and-operated stations across the country in the coming months.
Past Logos
Newscasts
- Weekdays:
- *Fox News Chicago in the Morning - 5-9AM
- *Fox News Chicago at Noon - 12-1PM
- *Fox News Chicago at 9PM - 9-10PM
- Saturday:
- *Fox News Chicago at 5PM - 5-6PM (Saturday)
- *Fox News Chicago at 9 - 9-10PM
- Sunday:
- *Fox Chicago Perspectives - 8-9AM (Sunday)
- *Fox News Chicago at 9PM - 9-10PM
Trivia
- Chicago is the largest market with a Fox station on the UHF dial.
- WFLD is also the first Fox UHF O&O to adopt a logo similar to that of sister WTVT. The new logos inspired by Fox News Channel use the logo colors red and blue, with the Fox logo in the top red bar, the city and calls in the bottom red bar, and the channel in the blue searchlight box. Since WFLD is branded Fox Chicago and not Fox Thirty-Two (or Fox 32), WFLD decided not to revert to the former branding and instead has a unique version of this new logo: the top red bar is empty, the Fox logo is in the searchlight box, the city Chicago is in the bottom red bar and the calls at the bottom in the white bar.
References
External links
| Terrestrial television>Broadcast television in the Chicago market [(Nielsen DMA #3)] | ||
|---|---|---|
|
WBBM 2 (CBS) -
W04CQ 4 (ANC) -
WMAQ 5 (NBC) -
WLS 7 (ABC) -
WGN 9 (The WB/The CW) (The Tube on DT2) -
WTTW 11 (PBS) -
WOCK-CA 13 (MTV2) -
W13BQ 13 (DW) -
W18AT 18 / W54BK 54 (LeSEA) -
WYCC 20 (PBS) -
WWME-CA 23 (Ind) -
W24AW 24 (LeSEA) -
WCIU 26 (Ind) -
WSPY-LP 30 (A1) -
WFLD 32 (Fox) -
WWTO 35 (TBN) -
WCPX 38 (i) -
WOCH-CA 41 (Ind) -
WSNS 44 (TEL) -
WFBT-CA 48 (Ind) -
WPWR 50 (UPN/My Network TV) -
W54BE 54 (edu.) -
WYIN 56 (PBS) -
WXFT 60 (TFT) -
WJYS 62 (Ind) -
W64CQ 64 (TBN) -
WGBO 66 (UNI)
| ||
| Local cable television channels | ||
| CLTV - Comcast SportsNet Chicago - Superstation WGN | ||