With Chicagoland’s only 24-hour local cable news channel now gone, WGN has taken the advantage by adding more local news and programming, especially on the weekends.
Since earlier this morning, WGN 9 added another hour to its Saturday morning newscast. The Saturday edition of the WGN Weekend Morning News is now live at 9:00 a.m. and now airs three hours of news on Saturdays from 7:00-10:00 a.m. The new hour is anchored by Sean Lewis and Tonya Francisco and competes against WMAQ 5 (NBC) and WLS 7 (ABC) for local news at that time in the market.
The Sunday morning edition remains two hours from 7:00-9:00 a.m. as the station adds a political show called the WGN-TV Political Report from 9:00-9:30 a.m., hosted by political analyst Paul Lisnek and anchor/political reporter Tahman Bradley.
Also added by WGN will be a new half-hour weekend newscast at 10:00 p.m. to expand upon the 9:00 p.m. newscast that the station already airs. WGN News at 10:00 on weekends will be anchored by Jackie Bange and Tahman Bradley. On Sundays, the news at 9:00 and 10:00 p.m. will be sandwiched in between by WGN’s longtime sports show, Instant Replay at 9:40 p.m. The Saturday edition debuts tonight while the Sunday edition debuts tomorrow.
This new newscast competes against the other stations in the market (WBBM 2 – CBS; half-hour, WMAQ 5 – NBC; half-hour and WLS 7 – ABC; hour-long) for local news at that time.
As a result of these new newscasts, WGN had to make some other programming changes, especially its local programs. First, Chicago’s Best simply moves a half-hour later to 10:30 p.m. on Sundays while BackStory with Larry Potash will also move a half-hour later to 10:30 p.m. on Saturdays. And because of the new Saturday morning hour, Living Healthy Chicago moves down an hour later to 10:00 a.m. while HouseSmarts moves into the afternoon at 3:30 p.m.
Again, this is all as a result of Chicagoland Television (CLTV) being shut down by the station’s owner Nexstar on New Year’s Eve after a 27-year run.
So as one service goes down, another just expands. There you go, Chicagoland. More news from one of America’s most-dominant and legendary stations.
changingnewscasts.wordpress.com 
WGN should cut back on its weekday news output by 6 percent to allow syndication to punish them unless one day its on-air weather isn’t done by people anymore! You can’t be all news, NINE!
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CLTV will be missed, along with WGN Sports and former owner Tribune Broadcasting.
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Chicago may not be out of a 24-hour local all day news channel for too long, WBBM_TV is a CBS O&O station and all CBS O&O stations this year are suppose to have CBSN Local which is a 24-hour local all day news channel. Hopefully CBSN Local in Chicago starts should fill the void for CLTV.
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Oh true.
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