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WMAQ-TV, virtual channel 5 (UHF digital channel 29), is an NBC owned-and-operated television station located in Chicago, Illinois, United States. The station is owned by NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations subsidiary of NBCUniversal, and is part of a duopoly with Telemundo station WSNS-TV (channel 44); it is also co-owned with regional sports network Comcast SportsNet Chicago. WMAQ-TV maintains studio facilities and business offices at the NBC Tower on North Columbus Drive in the city's Streeterville neighborhood, and its transmitter is located atop the Willis Tower on South Wacker Drive in the Chicago Loop. ==History== The station first signed on the air on October 8, 1948, under the call letters WNBQ. It was the fourth television station to sign on in the Chicago market (after WENR-TV (channel 7, now WLS-TV), which signed on three weeks earlier on September 17; WGN-TV (channel 9), which debuted six months earlier in April; WBKB (channel 4, now WBBM-TV on channel 2), which debuted in September 1946), and was the last of the city's four commercial VHF stations to launch. It was also the third of NBC's five original owned-and-operated television stations to begin operations, after WNBT (now WNBC) in New York City (which signed on as a full-time commercial station in July 1941) and WNBW (now WRC-TV) in Washington, D.C. (which signed on in June 1947); WNBK (now WKYC) in Cleveland and KNBH (now KNBC) in Los Angeles did not sign on until October 31, 1948 and January 16, 1949, respectively. The station initially broadcast a minimum of two hours of programming per day. Prior to the station's sign-on, the station originally was going to designate WNBY as its call letters; however at NBC's request, the Federal Communications Commission approved an application filed by the network to change the station's calls to WNBQ, a move that was announced on March 3, 1948. NBC officials cited the need to avoid possible confusion with WMAQ-AM-FM competitor WMBI (1110 AM) and to obtain a callsign that was closer to co-owned NBC Red Network radio station WMAQ (670 AM, frequency now occupied by WSCR; and 101.1 FM, now WKQX) as the reasoning for the change. The station's first mid-week broadcast came the month following its sign-on, when Paul Winchell and Joseph Dunninger were featured on the NBC variety series, the ''Floor Show''. The half-hour program was recorded via kinescope, and rebroadcast on WNBQ at 8:30 p.m. on Thursdays. WMAQ-TV originated several programs for the NBC television network from its original studio facilities – a studio on the 19th floor of the Merchandise Mart on the city's Near North Side – during the 1950s, including ''Kukla, Fran, and Ollie'', featuring Burr Tillstrom and Fran Allison; ''Garroway at Large'', starring Dave Garroway; and "Studs' Place," hosted by Studs Terkel. Television critics referred to the broadcasts – often low-budget with few celebrity guests but a good deal of inventiveness – as examples of the "Chicago School of Television."〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Early Chicago Originations to the NBC Network from WNBQ (later WMAQ-TV) )〕 The station installed equipment to produce and transmit its programming in color in late 1953; WNBQ's first notable color telecast occurred in January 1954, when the station broadcast NBC's telecast of the Rose Bowl parade in the format. Channel 5 aired its first local program to be broadcast in color, when John Ott's "How Does Your Garden Grow?" debuted in March 1955, which utilized time-lapse color film. On April 15, 1956, WNBQ became the first television station in the world to broadcast all of its programming in color, an event described by ''Broadcasting-Telecasting'' as "a daring breakthrough the black-and-white curtain", completing a project that cost more than $1.25 million to make the upgrades; the first color telecast from the station on that date was ''Wide, Wide World'', which was transmitted to 110 NBC stations across the country. Although NBC had long owned the WMAQ radio stations, the television station continued to maintain call letters separate from that used by its co-owned radio outlets; this changed on August 31, 1964, when the network changed the station's calls to WMAQ-TV.〔(【引用サイトリンク】newspaper=Chicago Tribune )〕 The calls of its sister radio station were initially assigned by the government, but went on to form the phrase "We Must Ask Questions," which the radio station took on as its motto in the 1920s. Although the station's role as a program provider to NBC diminished in the 1960s, WMAQ-TV gathered and distributed more than 200 feeds of news footage per month from overseas and the central United States to NBC News.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.richsamuels.com/nbcmm/1968/cuenews.html )〕 On December 3, 1985, NBC signed a $100 million+ agreement to lease office space in a three-story annex to the north of a planned 34-story, skyscraper – a project developed by the Equitable Life Asssurance Society and Tishman-Speyer Properties – that would be constructed as part of the Cityfront Center development on the northwest corner of Columbus Drive and North Water Street, in which WMAQ-TV's operations would occupy of the building; under the plans for the project, NBC was given the option of acquiring an approximately 25% interest in the building. On October 1, 1989, the station officially relocated its operations from the Merchandise Mart after 40 years and began broadcasting from the NBC Tower, located on 455 North Columbus Drive (the 19th floor of the Mart, six blocks west of the NBC Tower, has since been converted into office space). Ratings for WMAQ-TV's newscasts overtook those of WBBM-TV in the 1980s, but the station could not dethrone market leader WLS-TV during the period. On September 6, 2003, WMAQ agreed to lease of space at 401 North Michigan Avenue (one block east of the NBC Tower), with the intent to build a streetside studio for the Chicago market, the first to be used for live broadcasting purposes by a Chicago television station. On February 26, 2004, WMAQ-TV garnered national attention when Katie Couric, Al Roker, and Lester Holt hosted the ''Today'' show on Cityfront Plaza to unveil the station's streetside studio (known as "Studio 5"). The station's morning and noon newscasts were broadcast from the Michigan Avenue facility until February 2013, when the studio was closed and the space within the 401 Michigan Avenue building was put up for sale, at which time production of both newscasts was moved back to the NBC Tower. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「WMAQ-TV」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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