WGN A.M. News Balances Serious With Funny

When Tom Hanks showed up for a live interview in June at WGN, Tribune’s flagship station in Chicago, staffers dressed as characters from the actor’s past surprised him in the hallway on the way to the studio.

A WGN Morning News producer stood, sweeping the floor, dressed as Woody from Toy Story. Another guy, hanging out and reading the paper, wore a spacesuit, a cheesy replica of the one Hanks wore in Apollo 13. Hanks graciously played right along. “Your production value is off the scale,” he said.

Longtime Chicago media critic Robert Feder called the bit “pure magic.”

Those aren’t words we hear too often when discussing morning news shows or other local programming. But the folks at WGN have created a product that sometimes warrants them.

The show accomplishes something not easy to do. It mixes conventional news with banter and humor that, like the Hanks piece, is more often associated with late night than early morning.

Significantly, the show is not the creation of executives in a conference room looking for ways to reinvent local TV.

The way WGN staffers tell it, the show’s vibe evolved organically out of the relationship between co-anchors Larry Potash and Robin Baumgarten.

They and weatherman Paul Konrad, another key Morning News player, have been together for most of the 17 years that the show has been on the air. 

“People in our industry tend to be very serious news journalists,” Potash says. “And it’s not that we’re not serious about the news. But we just have this very sarcastic sense of humor and we’re not afraid to let it show in the newscast.

“We don’t want to have a silly story next to a murder story. That’s common sense. But I think when we do silly things people understand that’s part of life. It’s more real. Doctors or lawyers have moments in the office when they have some fun.”

WGN News Director Greg Caputo says the humor is kept in its proper place.

“First and foremost, we are a news show,” he says. “When there’s news to be covered, or breaking news, any planned lighter segments we will simply cancel on the spot. The humorous approach goes out the window.”

Potash has been with the show since it debuted as a one-hour program at 7 a.m. in 1994. Baumgarten joined the crew two years later as an airborne traffic reporter.

The show was successful enough that in 1996 it was expanded, first to two hours and then to three, running from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. It continued to grow in half-hour increments in the 2000s. Last July, it launched a 4 a.m. newscast, meaning that it now airs for five hours every weekday morning.

The show goes with straight news until 5:30. Although the broadcast tends to get lighter after that, more than half the time is still focused on news, Caputo says.

A story like severe weather will preempt the fun, he says. And so will a big get. WGN was the only morning show to air a live, in-studio interview with former Governor Rod Blagojevich before the start of his second trial.

“Without the news, the rest of it doesn’t make sense,” Caputo says. “But it is important to note that the world is not all pathos and tragedy.”

Some of the show’s better offbeat moments reflect the on-air rapport between the anchors that for better or worse you just can’t script.

Just take a look at the expression on Potash’s face when Baumgarten reamed him on-air in August for missing a story:

But some of the best stuff is scripted or at least set up.

Sports anchor Pat Tomasulo investigated whether it’s comfort or vanity that makes men run without their shirts (click here).

When Christopher Walken stopped by for an interview, the crew aired a compilation of producer Jeff Hoover’s parody impersonations of the actor (click here).

The show has a license to take comic chances because it’s a ratings winner. In September among adults 25-54, the show was No. 1 at 4 a.m., 6 a.m. and 7-9 a.m., according to ratings provided by the station. It was No. 2 at 5.

More evidence of the show’s success is that other stations in town are starting to knock off WGN’s bits, most notably the “Friday Dance” video compilation that puts the week’s goofy moments to music.

Feder says he “was very late in appreciating how good the show is because it so broke the form of traditional local news. I am very, very critical of news when it’s not done properly and I have to give them a lot of credit,” he says. “Somehow they are able to walk that line of not compromising the content of the news even though the stuff in between is some ways way out there.

“Without sacrificing their mandate to deliver a solid, credible, reliable news product, they fill the spaces in between with some of the most inspired and clever business I’ve ever seen anywhere on local television.”

How do they pull it off?

First of all, the WGN show is not that radical at the core. Lighter, non-news components are a feature of most morning shows. It just that the WGN bits go beyond cooking or health features. “We try to stay away from the milquetoast part,” Potash says.

Feder calls producer Hoover, who used to be a radio morning show writer and performer, a “true comic genius.”

And the show simply tries harder. Finding ways to make segments that could be typical — like that Tom Hanks interview — unique is everyone’s charge, Caputo says.

“Our people are always looking for the ‘Morning Show take’ on whatever we’re going to do,” Caputo says. “That’s part of the DNA of the program.”

From Feder’s perspective, the program is successful because it didn’t come down as a directive. No creative director came up with the format; no news director told a group of tightly wound anchors they had to be funny.

In addition, the program was given the time it needed to evolve into what it is today.

“Could it happen today? It probably couldn’t,” Feder says. “This grew in pieces. The expectations now are that things are going to have to hit immediately.”