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WSNS-TV
Chicago, Illinois
Branding	Telemundo Chicago
Channels	Analog: 44 (UHF) Digital: 45 (UHF)
Affiliations	Telemundo
Owner	NBC Universal, Inc. (NBC Telemundo License Company)
First air date	April 5, 1970
Call letters’ meaning	Essaness (former owner)
Sister station(s)	WMAQ-TV
Former affiliations	independent (1970–1985) ON-TV (1980–1985) SIN (1985–1987) Univision (1987–1989)
Transmitter Power	5000 kW (analog) 467 kW (digital)
Height	472 m (both)
Facility ID	70119
Transmitter Coordinates	41°52′44″N 87°38′10.2″W / 41.87889, -87.636167
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.

History

1970s

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 Center. WSNS offered Japanese cartoons dubbed into English including Speed Racer, Ultraman, Prince Planet, Johnny Sokko, Space Giants and Spectreman.

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 (they have since been demolished). 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 hosted, reported and co-produced by Chuck Collins. Collins was a 21-year-old recent graduate in political science. Eventually, the show was bought by Collins and Samuelsohn and became syndicated in more than a dozen cities. Collins went on to capture 7 Emmy Awards for NBC News, two Peabody Awards, a duPont Award and the ABA's Silver Gavel Award.

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.

Sports

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 via contract.

WSNS also aired Chicago Bulls basketball games from 1973-76, as well as 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 Blackhawks road games from 1978–1980. Through the 1970s, WSNS aired college basketball featuring the Purdue Boilermakers, the Indiana Hoosiers, and in the late 1970s, the DePaul Blue Demons.

1980s

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).

2000s

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. At that time, WSNS moved its operations to the NBC Tower, the home of WMAQ-TV. Two years later, NBC became the sole owner of WSNS when it bought out Essaness' stake in the station.

Digital television

Analog-to-digital conversion

After the analog television shutdown and digital conversion, which is tentatively scheduled to take place on February 17, 2009 ^[1], WSNS-TV will continue digital broadcasts on its current pre-transition channel number, 45. ^[2] However, through the use of PSIP, digital television receivers will display WSNS-TV's virtual channel as 44.

Trivia

• 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.

References

External links

• TelemundoChicago.com: WSNS Homepage
• Query the FCC's TV station database for WSNS-TV
• BIAfn's Media Web Database -- Information on WSNS-TV

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