How the WGN-TV Chicago DirecTV Outage Affects Your News Monitoring

How the WGN-TV Chicago DirecTV Outage Affects Your News Monitoring

When it comes to news monitoring services / news tracking, there are several ways to monitor. All of the options rely on seeing video and/or hearing the audio of the channel to be monitored.

The recent outage that DirecTV subscribers are experiencing directly affects those monitoring services who use DirecTV to monitor WGN-TV and WGN America.

WGN-TV is off the air for DIRECTV subscribers. DIRECTV stopped airing WGN-TV at 11:59 p.m. Saturday, March 31, having failed to offer fair compensation for our programming. Call 855-438-9469 toll free and tell DIRECTV you want WGN Sports, WGN News, the CW and all your favorite shows back. Click here for updates and other ways to get WGN-TV.

The above image is from the homepage of the http://WGNtv.com website.

News Exposure is based in Chicago, and records WGN-TV using an over the air antenna, in addition to a local cable provider. In fact, most of the 210 markets that News Exposure monitors uses the terrestrial signal available in the local market or a local cable service. This helps to ensure the fewest outages possible.

For those companies that use a satellite service to receive the channels that they monitor, WGN is just one channel that is currently not present. Clients depend on services like News Exposure to provide monitoring from all channels in as many markets as possible.

In Chicago alone, this current DirecTV outage makes four channels that are now exclusively monitored by News Exposure. WGN, WCIU (featuring “You and Me This morning”–a two hour, Monday – Friday program), WMAQDT2 (also known as NONSTOP), and LiveWell (WLSDT2).

The question to ask yourself is, am I receiving the most complete coverage possible when I choose which monitoring service to use? Now, ask yourself that question 22 more times. The Tribune owns 23 television stations in 19 DMAs.

  • WPIX 11 (CW) – New York
  • KTLA 5 (CW) – Los Angeles
  • WGN 9 (CW) – Chicago (Tribune’s flagship TV station)
  • KDAF 33 (CW) – Dallas
  • WDCW 50 (CW) – Washington
  • KIAH 39 (CW) – Houston
  • WSFL 39 (CW) – Miami/Ft. Lauderdale
  • KWGN 2 (CW) – Denver
  • WTTV 4 (CW) – Bloomington/Indianapolis
  • WCCT 20 (CW) – Waterbury/Hartford/New Haven
  • WNOL 38 (CW) – New Orleans
  • KPLR-TV 11 (CW) – St. Louis
  • KRCW 32 (CW) – Portland, OR
  • KSWB 69 (FOX) – San Diego
  • KCPQ 13 (FOX) – Tacoma/Seattle
  • KTXL 40 (FOX) – Sacramento
  • WXIN 59 (FOX) – Indianapolis
  • WTIC 61 (FOX) – Hartford/New Haven
  • WXMI 17 (FOX) – Grand Rapids/Kalamazoo, MI
  • WPMT 43 (FOX) – York/Harrisburg, PA
  • WGNO 26 (ABC) – New Orleans
  • WPHL 17 (MyNetwork) – Philadelphia
  • KZJO 22 (MyNetwork) – Seattle

 

The above list of Tribune owned TV stations is from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_Tribune_Company

Because of the strong network of independently owned offices with physical presence in the markets listed above, News Exposure continues to provide monitoring for the stations listed.

For the latest information on the DirecTV/WGN outage: http://www.telldirectv.com/wgntv/