Chicago Station to Add More News
WGN in Chicago is adding a 6PM newscast.
The Tribune station announced that it is adding another hour of news and will be creating a new anchor team for its 4:00pm newscasts, which will have an impact on its morning news team.
WGN currently has late afternoon/early evening newscasts at 4:00pm and 5:00pm. Those newscasts are anchored by Mark Suppelsa and Micah Materre, with weather by Tom Skilling and sports by Dan Roan.
Starting April 4th, a 6:00pm newscast will be added. This newscast will replace two airings of the syndicated sitcom "Two and a Half Men."
For this new hour of news, the same team of Suppelsa, Materre, Skilling, and Roan will be used. This same team will also continue to anchor the newscasts on 9:00pm and 10:00pm. However, these four will no longer work the 4:00pm hour.
Effective that first week of April, the new 4:00pm news team will be news anchors Ben Bradley and Lourdes Duarte, with weather from Demetrious Ivory and sports by Jarrett Payton.
Bradley joined WGN-TV on January 4th as the station's newest investigative reporter for WGN Investigates. He came to the station after 14 years with WLS/ABC 7 where he was a reporter and weekend morning news anchor. He will continue to be a part of WGN's investigative team along with his new anchor duties.
For Duarte, it is a welcome return to afternoons, where she used to anchor the 5:00pm newscast starting in 2009 and lasting until she was transferred (some might say unduly demoted) to the 4:00am newscast in the summer of 2015. As of the start of April, Duarte will no longer work on the "WGN Morning News" from 4:00am-6:00am. No replacement, if any, has been decided upon to fill Duarte's morning vacancy. She has worked for WGN since 2007.
WGN-TV News Director Jennifer Lyons said: "We look forward to offering Chicagoland viewers a fresh new choice for news at 6:00pm and the only local news in the market at 6:30pm. The debut of Ben Bradley and Lourdes Duarte at 4:00pm will make a great addition to 'Evening News' with their news judgement, knowledge of Chicago, and investigative story telling."