Fox 32 News Director Glenn Dacy exits; succeeded by Sean O’Hair
Change comes as station expands local programming efforts
As first reported by Kevin Eck, Fox 32 News Director Glenn Dacy has abruptly left the Fox-owned station and is being succeeded by Sean O’Heir, who now takes over as VP Of News Content And Programming.
Dacy came to WFLD from CBS News’ special events unit. A reason for his departure wasn’t given.
O’Heir’s promotion comes after he joined the station a decade ago with the last two years as VP Of Programming and Development. O’Heir developed local programming and ran the sports department.
In a station memo obtained by Eck, O’Heir said the following: “[T]he media landscape has never been more challenging. Headlines are full of bad outcomes. Simultaneously, it has never been easier for us to experiment and innovate.”
One of those “experiments” is adding a three-hour news-and-information wheel titled Fox Chicago Playlist, airing from 6 to 9 p.m. weeknights on Fox Chicago Plus (WPWR-TV), replacing a block of syndictated programming which included Family Feud.
“We are going to do many new things”, he went on to say. “We will take risks. We will stumble along the way. We will learn from mistakes. We will succeed in building Chicago’s leading source for compelling content.”
This comes after Fox 32 pushed through a major news and local programming expansion, on its two linear outlets and on the Fox Local App, similar to what other Fox-owned stations have done. This week, WFLD added a new, two-hour lifestyle show Chicago Now to its daytime schedule, which up until Monday, ran exclusively on Fox Local.
WFLD also added a new 10 p.m. show this week called The Chicago Report with Paris Schutz, offering more analysis on the stories of the day, marking a return to the 10 p.m. news business for the first time since September 2009 when The Ten was canceled. Fox 32 has also expanded Chicago Sports Tonight from a weekly Sunday show to a six day-a-week strip, airing most nights at 9:30 p.m., though it would be pre-empted on some nights on the linear channel due to Fox’s heavy sports schedule (Fox 32 retains 1st & North, its NFL show on Tuesdays.)
It seems both WGN-TV and WFLD-TV have gotten new people to head up their news operations within the recent weeks. Is there a new battle brewing between the two stations for local news? Also, based on what you have reported, WFLD has increased its local programming this fall, which is something I am surprised they had not done much sooner. I will admit I have not watched WFLD in years. I am not so sure I will switch to them now as I have no clue who their anchors and reporters are. I last watched them when Robin Robinson co-anchored with Walter Jacobson and then Mark Suppelsa. After they left, I did too. I moved to WGN more frequently when Mark landed there. Joe Donlon was a very good replacement for Mark, and Joe reminded me of some of the old-school news anchors we have had in Chicago (like a Bill Kurtis, John Drury, Fahey Flynn, Floyd Kalber, or Bob Jordan). I like Ray Cortopassi on Channel 9, but not necessarily as a main news anchor. I would prefer Joe. It would be nice if WGN could bring back Joe Donlon. I am not sure how he’s doing over at WBBM-TV, but I gave up on WBBM-TV years ago after they took off Carol Marin from her time on the 10 p.m. news. She anchored a very different and more interesting news program back then on Channel 2. We need more innovation and less of the copycats in local news and local programming. My other favorites are Jackie Bange, Tahman Bradley, Ben Bradley, Lourdes Duarte, and Gaynor Hall was one of the best at WGN until she left. Roseanne Tellez is another past WGN alum that I miss seeing on Channel 9 news. She shined whether she was doing the news in the morning, at noon, at night or on the weekends. When she left Channel 2, I thought she might end up back on Channel 9 (perhaps wishful thinking on my part) instead of going over to Channel 32. News is a strange business. TV stations (and for that matter, newspapers too) either do it right or they drive consumers away.
I’m sorry, but I can’t stand many of WGN’s “personalities” these days, especially the 4 p.m. news team and Jarrett Payton. The news operation has become “happy talk central”, echoing the Flynn-Daly-Coleman era of the 1970s. I miss the hard-hitting, no-nonsense journalism Bill Kurtis and Walter Jacobson did for Channel 2. Local news needs to get back to that, and not listening to research “experts”. But of course, it’s all about ratings these days.
You are so right about the “happy talk” growing at Channel 9. My mother even noticed it. I don’t get to see their 4 p.m. news, but the later newscasts seem to be nothing but goofing around between Micah and Demetrius. I also agree with you about Bill Kurtis and Walter Jacobson. Channel 2 news was the best back in that era. Sadly, no one even tries to replicate that gone-by time. Also, I always enjoyed Walter Jacobson’s Perspectives, back when TV stations seemed to hold politicians to the fire. With so many of Chicago’s local TV stations airing many newscasts in a 24-hour period, why can’t they experiment and try at least one of their newscasts as a hard-hitting, no-nonsense presentation. I might be the exception, but I think having more newscasts is not necessarily giving us a better product. As I have said before, I miss the old 15 minute and 30-minute newscasts.
Also, just wondering why WGN+ needs a daily show, The Forecasters, about how they come up with the weather forecast. Seems to me that WGN is slapping WGN+ on any old thing just to say it’s original programming. Enough is enough!
Media conglomerates own these stations, and they’re very corporate in 2025; they view “happy talk” as a thing of the past. CBS, NBC, ABC, and FOX all have their input on the structure of a newscast. WGN is owned by Nexstar, which I’m starting to have issues with, but these managers of today don’t want a newscast in 2025 to be the news of 30-40 years ago. Plus with Chicago being the third-largest television market. There are pressures not to go over budget and to do more news with fewer resources.