I've never understood this. Why? There's nothing on it that I cant normally get, besides the Bulls or Cubs. Someone tell me why as a Houstonian.. I get WGN? - Brand0n
TBS used to be the same way. I just looked it up and it appears to be a throwback to the era of the giant 1970's C-band satellite TV dishes, when there really wasn't that much programming available. No TNT, MTV, Discovery, A&E or any of the million other 'cable exclusive' stations. HBO existed, but only 1 channel, etc. Some satellite company just decided to add WGN to their satellite feed so they would have more than say 10 satellite channels and it has just hung around since. The Wikipedia entry on 'superstation' gets has some more background on the general theme.
TBS from Atlanta is owned by Ted Turner, and Turner was a huge part in helping launch cable TV in America. TNT is another Turner station (Turner Network Television). also TCM (Turner Classic Movies). The Cartoon Network was created by Turner Broadcasting. In 1988 Turner bought WCW and brought it to cable. Turner invented CNN. As to why you get WGN (a non-Turner station).... When cable TV was introduced to America, it's place wasn't quite clear. With old TV (using antennas) it was impossible to get broadcasts that were local to other cities (without having some kind of super antenna setup). When cable TV came around, this was an interesting novelty. "Look! I can watch local news from other cities, like Chicago and Atlanta! Wow!" After a while, though, the novelty wore off and it became apparent that most people don't really care much about the local news in different cities Nevertheless, WGN and TBS have stayed on cable and are remnants of the very early days of cable television. And thank you for making me feel very old.
