Misplaced Pages

WMAQ-TV

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 69.212.242.201 (talk) at 06:43, 2 January 2006. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 06:43, 2 January 2006 by 69.212.242.201 (talk)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

{{Infobox broadcast}} may refer to:

Topics referred to by the same term This is an unused template to list other templates associated with a similar title or shortcut.
If an internal transclusion led you here, you may wish to change it to point directly to the intended page.

{{Template disambiguation}} should never be transcluded in the main namespace.

WMAQ-TV, "NBC5 Chicago", is the NBC owned and operated television station in Chicago, Illinois. The station transmits from atop the Sears Tower while its studios are located in the NBC Tower in downtown Chicago. It also has a street-level windowed studio known as Studio 5 on N. Michigan Avenue.

History

The station signed on November 1, 1948 as WNBQ. Eight years later, it became the first station to broadcast all of its programs in color. Though NBC had long owned WMAQ-AM, it did not change the TV station's call letters to match until 1964.

WMAQ-TV gained fame for its newscasts during the 1960s, anchored by Floyd Kalber, with weatherman Harry Volkman (later of WBBM-TV, WGN-TV, and WFLD) and commentator Len O'Connor. In the early 1970s, Jane Pauley, later of NBC national news, co-anchored WMAQ-TV's 10 p.m. news with Kalber. The station operated from the Merchandise Mart before moving to the NBC Tower in 1989.

The Jerry Springer Controversy

WMAQ achieved notoriety in 1997 when the station, in an effort to boost its newscast ratings, hired Jerry Springer as a commentator. At the same time, the station adopted a more tabloid news format by bringing in Joel Cheatwood. Cheatwood was known for establishing fast-paced tabloid newscasts at WSVN in Miami and WHDH in Boston.

Though Springer was once a newscaster in Cincinnati, Ohio, his association with his infamous talk show (which was, and continues to broadcast from WMAQ's NBC Tower studios) led to the belief that the newscast was being dumbed down. There were a handful of Springer supporters. Nevertheless, the incident triggered a lot of negative publicity, both locally and nationally. The station's longtime anchor team, Carol Marin and Ron Magers, resigned in protest and the station saw a drop in its ratings. Springer only made two commentaries before being let go, and station management later admitted it made a mistake in hiring him.

Magers wound up at rival WLS-TV, where he still is today. Marin joined rival WBBM-TV while contributing reports at CBS before coming back to WMAQ in 2004 as a special correspondent.

News Personalities

Current Anchors

Other Current Staff

Past Personalities

References

External links

Broadcast television in Chicagoland and Northwest Indiana
This region includes the following cities: Chicago/Aurora/Joliet/DeKalb/Kankakee, IL
Gary/Michigan City, IN
Reception may vary by location and some stations may only be viewable with cable television
Full power
Low power
ATSC 1.1 MPEG-4
(converter required for older sets)
ATSC 3.0
Cable
Streaming
Defunct
Silent
General Electric
Successor companies*
Former subsidiaries
and divisions
Joint ventures/
shareholdings
Current**
Former
Products
and brands
People
Founders
Executives
Outside directors
Places and
facilities
Sponsorship
Other
  • * Following corporate split-up from 2023 to 2024
  • ** Joint ventures before corporate split-up from 2023 to 2024
Category: