WSNS
WSNS-TV (channel 44), branded Telemundo Chicago, is a television station in Chicago, Illinois, in the United States, serving as the local outlet for the Spanish-language Telemundo network. It is owned and operated by NBCUniversal's Telemundo Station Group alongside NBC station WMAQ-TV (channel 5). The two stations share studios at the NBC Tower on North Columbus Drive in the city's Streeterville neighbourhood and broadcast from a transmitter atop the Willis Tower in the Chicago Loop. WSNS has one of the most varied histories of any American television station: it began in 1970 with an automated headline service, became a sports-heavy independent, spent five years as a subscription television outlet, survived an eleven-year licence challenge that at one point cost it its licence on paper, and emerged as Chicago's first full-time Spanish-language station — first with Univision's predecessor network and, since 1989, with Telemundo.
Construction and the Essaness Origins
The station's call sign preserves its founding owner: WSNS renders the name Essaness, the Chicago motion picture theatre chain founded by Edwin Silverman and Steven Spiegel. Essaness filed in September 1962, as Essaness Television Associates, for a construction permit to build a new UHF station on channel 44 in Chicago, proposing programming aimed at minority groups, particularly the city's Black community. The Federal Communications Commission approved the application in May 1963. It took most of a decade to get the station built. The transmitter plans moved, antenna space was secured in 1965 on the new John Hancock Center, and in 1967 the Harriscope Broadcasting Corporation took a stake in the licensee, which was renamed Video 44. The transmission facility on the Hancock Center's east mast was completed in late 1969. After Silverman's death in February 1970, WSNS began broadcasting on April 5, 1970.
Instant News and the Experimental Early Format
WSNS opened with a format unlike anything else on American television: a continuous printed roundup of news headlines, sports scores, weather and other items, accompanied by advertising — a service its general manager called instant news. The reasoning was that a start-up UHF station was better off offering something different than competing directly with established programming. Seven months passed before the station broadcast programmes with live personalities, in an 11 p.m. hour that included newscasters, a commentator and an underground news segment whose sponsors were described as head shops and paperback bookstores; that programme ran for three years and was syndicated elsewhere. The automated format did not build lasting loyalty, and a miscellaneous schedule of talk shows, religious programmes and other fare followed, including a midnight programme in which headlines were read from a heart-shaped bed, sponsored by a mattress company. The instant news service ended in November 1971, by which time the station was broadcasting a more conventional mix in the evenings and all day on Sundays.
Chicago's Third Independent: Sports and Reruns
In 1972, Ed Morris arrived from PBS to run WSNS and set about making it a more traditional independent station: more classic reruns and films, a longer broadcast day and less of the earlier oddball schedule. The decisive acquisition came in 1973, when channel 44 took over television rights to Chicago White Sox baseball from WFLD, with broadcaster Harry Caray adding television play-by-play to his radio work. Chicago Bulls basketball also began on channel 44 in 1973; the station carried the Bulls' full 41-game road schedule, making them the only NBA team at the time with every road game televised. World Hockey Association hockey with the Chicago Cougars, college basketball and local professional wrestling filled out a sports-led schedule, alongside telecourses and the Illinois Lottery drawing programme. The Bulls left for WGN-TV in 1976 after falling ratings and the collapse of their television rights package, and the Chicago Black Hawks arrived in 1978 for two seasons, their return to local television after two seasons without a regular-season broadcast partner. The White Sox remained until the station's subscription television conversion after the 1980 season.
ON TV: Subscription Television, 1980 to 1985
Video 44 had sought authority for over-the-air subscription television, or STV, as early as 1975, but FCC policy delays held the plan up for years. After a proposed deal with a Time Inc. cable division collapsed under opposition from major film studios in 1979, an agreement with Oak Industries — maker of broadcast equipment and owner of the ON TV subscription service in Los Angeles — went ahead, with Oak buying a 49 percent stake in the venture for $7.5 million in 1980. On September 22, 1980, WSNS began offering ON TV programming in the evenings: first-run films, sports, specials and adult programming for subscribers paying a monthly fee plus installation for a decoder box. The service grew fast. By June 1982 it counted about 120,600 subscribers in the Chicago area, the second-largest STV system in the country after Los Angeles. WSNS progressively surrendered its schedule to the pay service — 20 hours a day by January 1982 and 23 hours a day later that year — effectively ceasing to exist as a conventional station and shedding its own staff.
The model also carried a sports venture, SportsVision, through which Chicago's White Sox, Bulls, Blackhawks and Sting offered their games by subscription, initially on another channel and using two-channel decoders shared with ON TV. SportsVision never reached the subscriber base it needed, and it was folded into ON TV at the start of 1984. By then the whole STV industry was collapsing as cable television spread and a recession cut disposable income: Chicago subscriptions fell from their 1982 peak to 89,500 by August 1983 and kept falling despite ON TV absorbing its local rival, Spectrum, in 1984. Piracy was rampant. In March 1985, with subscribers down to about 35,000, Oak announced it would end its STV service on June 30, 1985. WSNS was the last ON TV station standing.
The Licence Challenge
The near-disappearance of free programming on channel 44 provoked a challenge that shadowed the station for more than a decade. In 1982, a consortium called Monroe Communications filed its own application for channel 44 — proposing Spanish-language programming — in competition with WSNS's licence renewal, and the FCC set the two for comparative hearing in 1983. In February 1985, an FCC administrative law judge ruled for Monroe, finding that Video 44 had rendered minimal service, with no news, no regular local programmes and studios effectively shut down. The case then wound through the FCC review board, which reversed that outcome in 1988, and the federal courts. In September 1990 the FCC itself denied Video 44's renewal and awarded a construction permit to Monroe — an extraordinary step against a sitting licensee. Community leaders, including Hispanic aldermen, objected that revoking the licence would deprive Chicago's Hispanic community of a major voice, since by then WSNS had become a Spanish-language station. The challenge finally ended in June 1993, after eleven years, when Monroe agreed to drop its case in an $18 million settlement paid by Harriscope. The episode remains a notable case in American broadcast regulation, and the station's survival owed much to the audience it had built in its new Spanish-language role.
Chicago's First Full-Time Spanish-Language Station
On July 1, 1985, the day after ON TV ended, WSNS became a full-time Spanish-language station affiliated with the Spanish International Network, which was renamed Univision in 1987. It was Chicago's first full-time Spanish-language outlet: the city's other Spanish-language services either mixed Spanish programming with other fare or shared a channel. The timing matched the audience — Hispanics were estimated at about 19 percent of Chicago's population, served until then by a single Spanish-language radio station. The new service was an immediate financial success, with first-year revenue of $9 million, about 20 percent above projections, and roughly 70 percent of Chicago Hispanics tuning to local Spanish-language television after its arrival. Local newscasts began in October 1985. WSNS had traded a dying pay-television model for a growing audience that the market had underserved for years.
Switch to Telemundo and Network Ownership
In October 1988, WSNS announced it would switch from Univision to Telemundo when its affiliation agreement ended. The two Chicago stations involved effectively swapped networks, and the switch took place on January 10, 1989. WSNS's management said Telemundo had made an offer it could not refuse, while Univision said the two sides had reached a financial impasse. WSNS became Telemundo's largest affiliate. In November 1995, Harriscope and Oak sold their combined 74.5 percent controlling interest in the station to Telemundo for $44.7 million, with Essaness initially retaining a minority stake; the FCC approved the deal in February 1996, allowing Telemundo to own outright the largest station in its network that it did not already own, and allowing Oak to exit television at last. Competition intensified in the same period with the arrival of a new full-time Univision station, WGBO-TV, which quickly outdrew WSNS among Hispanic viewers. In 1999 the station moved its transmission facilities from the John Hancock Center to the Sears Tower — now the Willis Tower — as it built its digital facility.
The NBC Era and the WMAQ Duopoly
When NBC purchased Telemundo in 2002, WSNS came under the same corporate ownership as NBC station WMAQ-TV, creating Chicago's first commercial television duopoly of two full-power stations. The consolidation raised labour questions, as Telemundo staff sought the union benefits NBC employees enjoyed, and the station's nine anchors and reporters voted unanimously to join the performers' union. In June 2003, WSNS left its longtime studio on West Grant Place and merged its operations with WMAQ at the NBC Tower on North Columbus Drive in Streeterville, where the two stations remain. Management was later unified as well, with WMAQ's president and general manager taking on the same role for WSNS in 2016, and a successor appointed to lead both stations in 2021.
News and Sports Programming
WSNS's local news operation, Noticiero Telemundo Chicago, dates from the Spanish-language launch, with newscasts beginning in October 1985 under an earlier title and late newscasts added in October 1994. A first morning newscast launched in January 2001; a later morning programme was dropped in 2009 amid budget cuts, and a mid-morning experiment evolved into a lifestyle programme, Acceso Total. As a Telemundo owned-and-operated station, WSNS joined group-wide news expansions: its early-evening news grew to a full hour with a 4:30 p.m. addition in September 2014 and a 4 p.m. half-hour in 2016, weekend newscasts followed in 2017, and a midday newscast was introduced in January 2018. In 2015 the station launched a consumer investigative unit under the Telemundo Responde banner. In sports, WSNS carried Spanish-language broadcasts of Chicago Bears preseason football from 2003 to 2007 under a partnership with WMAQ — the first time Bears preseason games were televised in Spanish — and it has broadcast the Chicago Marathon since 2017, also in partnership with its sister station.
Technical Information, Spectrum Sale and Channel Sharing
WSNS shut down its analogue signal on UHF channel 44 on June 12, 2009, the national digital transition date, continuing digitally on its pre-transition channel 45 with virtual channel 44. In the FCC's 2017 spectrum incentive auction, NBC sold WSNS's spectrum for $141.7 million. The station ceased broadcasting on channel 45 on April 23, 2018, and began sharing spectrum with WMAQ-TV — a channel-sharing arrangement under which WSNS's programmes are transmitted within its sister station's signal from the Willis Tower, moving to channel 29 and later channel 33 while still appearing to viewers as channel 44. Its multiplex carries Telemundo in high definition on 44.1 and TeleXitos on 44.2. The station's FCC facility ID is 70119. Few American stations have passed through as many distinct lives — automated news wheel, sports independent, pay television, licence defendant and Spanish-language network flagship — as channel 44 in Chicago.
