Chicagoan and former FCC chair Newton Minow famously characterized television as a “vast wasteland,” but there’s plenty of life on the prairie. Shows have been made here since TV’s beginnings, from the first soap opera (These Are My Children, in 1949) to Kukla, Fran and Ollie to Unsolved Mysteries to Prison Break.
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There is, however, a lot of made-in-Chicago TV filling the national airwaves. Well-known exports include the winner-and-still-champ of the talk show genre, The Oprah Winfrey Show, which sprang from Oprah’s gig as host of AM Chicago on the ABC affiliate Channel Seven in 1984. Her show effectively picked up where Phil Donahue, who filmed his groundbreaking talk show here from 1974 to 1985 before moving to New York, left off. Buena Vista’s Ebert & Roeper started out in 1975–with the Tribune’s late Gene Siskel, not Richard Roeper, sharing the aisle seats with Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert–as Opening Soon at a Theater Near You, a monthly show on public station WTTW. Other syndicated shows currently produced here include The Jerry Springer Show and Judge Mathis. WTTW produces the concert series Soundstage, which was resurrected recently after originally running from 1974 to 1985, and Mexico–One Plate at a Time, starring Frontera Grill chef Rick Bayless.
But Chicago’s hidden strength in national TV is local producers of nonfiction shows–or what’s called “factual programming.” There are too many to mention them all, but chances are good you’ve seen programs from one of these:
Bellevue Entertainment Bellevue makes high-definition nature shows and entertainment programming for Bravo, the Travel Channel, and Discovery HD Theater, such as the recent Las Vegas Live and Yellowstone: America’s First National Park.
The Kindling Group Kindling is currently in production with The Calling, a multipart series profiling future leaders of different faiths in America, and Devon Ave, an American Street, about the cultural diversity along the famous north-side street. Executive director Daniel Alpert produced A Doula Story and No Time to Be a Child and coproduced Legacy.
