The Media Notepad: WGN-TV GM Paul Rennie to retire
Also: American Crimes replaces NBC Home LX on digital subchannel space; Last Call for Last Call; TMZ launches new spin-off show
WGN-TV vice president and general manager Paul Rennie announced his retirement, effective August 30 after a seven-year run.
“It has truly been a great run, and I am filled with a mix of emotions as I prepare to leave this very special place,” said Rennie. “Working at WGN-TV has been an honor and a privilege, made even more so by the talented, dedicated, and passionate individuals who work here. Their hard work and commitment have inspired me every day. I am proud of everything we accomplished together and confident that WGN’s legacy of unbiased local news and its long-time connection to the greater Chicago community is in good hands with Nexstar.”
Arriving from sister stations WTTV/WXIN Indianapolis in 2016, Rennie oversaw the expansion of WGN’s local programming with two daytime shows, added a newscast in prime access (6-7 p.m.), weekend shows WGN-TV Political Report, nightly sports wrap-up show GN Sports, and the critically acclaimed and award-winning Backstory and off-network reruns of The Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon to its weeknight schedule. WGN continued its dominance in the AM Patrol with the WGN Morning News the top-rated show in the 25-54 demo. And thanks to Nexstar’s purchase of The CW, WGN snared the rights to all their sporting events, leading to the station reuniting with the network on August 31 after ten years away.
This marks the latest retirement in Chicago media exec ranks – last year, Fox’s WFLD/WPWR VP/GM Dennis Welsh retired, and recently, ABC 7 news director Jennifer Graves did likewise.
In a quiet move, NBC has removed NBC LX Home digital subchannel from linear and replaced it with American Crimes, featuring true crime programming from the NBCUniversal library. In Chicago, American Crimes replaced NBC LX Home on WMAQ Channel 5.3 as it shifted to an online FAST channel.
The new format is led by CNBC’s American Greed, telling stories of white-collar crime hosted by Stacy Keach. Created by former CBS 2 executive Mark Hoffman, it’s produced by Bill Kurtis’ production company based out of Chicago.
Also airing on American Crimes are Lockup, Dateline, and a non-NBCUniversal syndicated show, Bloodline Detectives.
The channel space originally housed Universal Sports until its closure in January 2012. NBC re-launched the frequency in 2020 with original LX programming featuring news and entertainment geared to Gen Z and millennial viewers, an extension of LXTV’s lifestyle programming produced by NBC for its owned stations including Open House and 1st Look (both now air in first-run syndication on weekends and overnight on NBC affiliates) Both shows and George To The Rescue generally air on WMAQ (NBC 5) and other NBC-owned stations in weekend late-night time slot.
Due to the pandemic and difficult economic conditions, NBC shut down LX News and converted LX to NBC LX Home, featuring a non-stop loop of their lifestyle programming but changed formats several weeks ago, following CBS’ decision to convert former lifestyle programming channel Dabl last December to an all-sitcom format targeted to Black audiences, now run by Chicago-based Weigel Broadcasting under a shared services agreement.
In NBC’s O&O markets, American Crimes (at dot-three) is now adjunct to Oxygen (at dot-four), giving NBCUniversal two true crime channels with the latter still available as a basic cable channel.
American Crimes is also available on numerous streaming platforms, including YouTubeTV, Pluto TV, and Xumo Play.
It’s last call for CNBC’s Last Call as the NBCUniversal business cable network abruptly canceled the show last week.
The decision to drop Last Call was due to “the challenging conditions we saw in our industry earlier this year have not abated.”, said SVP of CNBC Business News Dan Colarusso. “This decision was not made lightly, but it is necessary as we realign resources to support other growth areas of our business.”
Anchored by Brian Sullivan, Last Call’s cancellation won’t result in any layoffs, as the show was replaced Thursday with Shark Tank reruns for the foreseeable future.
Airing in prime access (6-7 p.m. CT), Last Call faced the same problem predecessor The News With Shepard Smith did – difficulty attracting business news viewers in this time slot. According to data The Wrap obtained, half of the network’s core viewers weren’t watching TV then; the other half were streaming or watching entertainment or sports shows. Both had to compete not only with programming on other cable news networks, but also longtime staples Wheel Of Fortune, Jeopardy!, and Family Feud not to mention off-network sitcoms and magazine shows.
Smith’s news show was canceled in November 2022, and Last Call was launched in March 2023. Last Call was also the title of a short-lived syndicated panel show produced by Brandon Tartikoff during the 1994-95 season and a previous NBC late-night effort hosted by Carlson Daly.
As for the show’s legacy – at least to the very few Chicago viewers who tuned in to watch, this clip from April 5 of last year sums up how Last Call reported on the city’s issues:
"Am I the only who actually likes what happened in Chicago?" asks @MickMulvaney. "It's the American experiment working." pic.twitter.com/fJXTDbJnAR
— Last Call (@LastCallCNBC) April 5, 2023
Fox First-Run premiered yet another test run of a syndicated show two weeks ago, this time from the producers of TMZ. Hosted by Harvey Levin, Strange & Suspicious is a show digging deep into the world of unexplained, unsolved, weird stories from around the world with the help of a retired cop, a private investigator, an archaeologist, a UFO investigator, and a mathematician (yes, a mathematician.) Maybe we can get a CTA train operator, the personal assistant to Mayor Brandon Johnson, and White Sox announcer John Schriffen to join in on the fun as well.
Think of it as true crime meets the paranormal, set up similarly to the main TMZ show, with Levin discussing subjects in the newsroom.
Fox is testing the show for four weeks in twelve markets, mostly on the group’s My Network TV stations (because of frequent pre-emptions on Fox-owned stations due to soccer coverage) including My 50, which is airing the program weeknights at 7:30 p.m.
Originally syndicated by Warner Bros., Fox took over syndication of TMZ‘s TV show and website in September 2021, adding to its stable of first-run syndicated shows. In 2022, TMZ tried to launch a hip-hop version of the gossip magazine show as a test project for a four-week run but it wasn’t successful.
But another test project – the hour-long TMZ Live – was more successful, and is now airing in more than 50 markets.
Sorry, did I misunderstand that there was another news item about The Big Bang Theory in the above article? I must have missed it if there’s another item mentioning the show after the section about WGN-TV’s Paul Rennie’s upcoming retirement. Thank you.
I originally intended to write an item about audio from a Big Bang Theory episode made it onto a Chicago Sky Zoom press conference earlier this month, but replaced it with another story at the last minute – I forgot to take the line out of the Paul Rennie story. It’s been removed now, and my apologies.