About WGN TV

On September 13, 1946, WGN Incorporated—a subsidiary of the Chicago Tribune Company and owner of local radio stations WGN (720 AM) and WGNB (98.7 FM; frequency now occupied by WFMT)—applied to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a construction permit to build and a license to operate a television station on VHF channel 9. (After discovering that the first application named VHF channel 4, which had already been allocated to Balaban and Katz Broadcasting for the nascent WBKB-TV, WGN executives had to revise the application to utilize channel 9.)

After the FCC granted WGN Inc. the license on November 8, the firm sought WGNA as the station's call letters; but, by January 1948, the corporation had opted to designate its new television property WGN-TV. The three-letter base callsign - obtained by Tribune in 1924 for the former WDAP radio station (on its purchase from Zenith-Edgewater Beach Broadcasting) with the permission of the owners of the then-under-construction SS Carl D. Bradley and used in modified form for WGNB from November 1945 until the FM station ceased operations in May 1953 - refers to the "World's Greatest Newspaper," a phrase originally used by the Tribune in a February 1909 story marking the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth and which served as the newspaper's slogan from August 29, 1911 until December 31, 1976.