The Best TV Shows on WGN America

Bozo, Gar and Ray: WGN TV Classics is a two-hour television special produced by WGN-TV in Chicago, Illinois. It debuted in 2005 and featured on both WGN-TV and its superstation simulcast, WGN America. The program is hosted by WGN-TV personality Dean Richards. The special airs annually, immediately after the McDonald's Thanksgiving Parade on Thanksgiving nationally on WGN America, as well as on Christmas Eve on WGN Chicago. The show was created in response to the continuing popularity of WGN programming, including Bozo the Clown, which had been seen weekly on WGN until 2001. Because most Bozo shows were either wiped or never recorded, and because of scheduling constraints, rerunning the show was not an option. Thus, WGN decided to cobble together the best of the remaining tapes of WGN's children's programming to create the special. Included in the special were the Bozo programs Bozo's Circus, Big Top, The Bozo Show, and The Bozo Super Sunday Show, as well as the long-running children's programs Garfield Goose and Friends and Ray Rayner and His Friends, both of which are well known in Chicago although less known outside the area. The original incarnation of the Chicago Bozo show, Bozo, was not featured and is believed to be lost.

An online/broadcast hybrid reality series based on the concept of whether a person can circle the globe without any money. The show follows a reality star, as they attempt to travel around the world without any money on hand. They travel with one cameraman and rely on local guides and inhabitants for basic needs.

WWE Superstars is a professional wrestling television program produced by WWE that originally aired on WGN America in the United States. It debuted on April 16, 2009 and ended its domestic broadcasting on April 7, 2011. After the final domestic TV broadcast the show moved to an internet broadcast format while maintaining a traditional television broadcast in international markets. The show features mid-to-low card WWE superstars and divas, in a format similar to the former show WWE Heat which served the same purpose. Big names such as John Cena and Randy Orton previously appeared on the show at its beginning. The show also previously featured talent from the now-defunct ECW brand.

Set in the volatile world of 17th century Massachusetts, 'Salem' explores what really fueled the town's infamous witch trials and dares to uncover the dark, supernatural truth hiding behind the veil of this infamous period in American history. In Salem, witches are real, but they are not who or what they seem.

The survivor of a famous child-abduction case joins a special task force dedicated to solving abductions and missing person cases.

Set against the backdrop of the greatest clandestine race against time in the history of science with the mission to build the world's first atomic bomb in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Flawed scientists and their families attempt to co-exist in a world where secrets and lies infiltrate every aspect of their lives.

The Bozo Super Sunday Show is the final version of WGN-TV's 40+ year-old Bozo series, which aired on Sunday mornings for seven seasons. It was taped in Chicago. The lead star of the show was Bozo the Clown, played by Joey D'Auria. The last episode was taped on October 25, 2000 and featured a cameo appearance by Roy Brown as Cooky the Cook, Bozo's sidekick on WGN's previous Bozo series, Bozo's Circus and The Bozo Show. In 1997, the show was retooled in an effort to make the show qualify for educational requirements. The final Bozo television taping was the Bozo: 40 Years of Fun! special on June 12, 2001. It aired on July 14, 2001, featuring a guest appearance by singer Billy Corgan, a loyal fan of WGN's Bozo series, who performed Bob Dylan's "Forever Young." The final rerun of The Bozo Super Sunday Show was broadcast August 26, 2001. Counting both of its predecessors, the Chicago Bozo was the longest-running television adaptation of the Bozo franchise, which was seen in numerous local versions throughout North America. The vast majority of Bozo stations had discontinued their Bozo franchises in the early 1970s, with the exception of a few stations that had revivals in the late 1980s.

The Bozo Show is a locally produced children's television program that aired on WGN-TV in Chicago and nationally on what is now WGN America. The series is a local version of the internationally franchised Bozo the Clown format and is also the longest-running in the franchise. Recognized as the most popular and successful locally produced children's program in the history of television, it only aired under this title for 14 of its 40+ years: other titles were Bozo, Bozo's Circus, and The Bozo Super Sunday Show.

A former DEA agent forced into early retirement runs a gift shop in in the Philippines. Despite his best efforts to begin a tranquil new life, he’s pulled back into a world of dangerous people and deadly situations, either through his friends in the local police department or running into people from his old life. And the problem is: he likes it.

A group of slaves plan a daring 600-mile escape from a Georgia plantation. Along the way, they are aided by a secret abolitionist couple running a station on the Underground Railroad as they attempt to evade the people charged with bringing them back, dead or alive.

A struggle for power and control set in the rugged and mysterious hills of Appalachia, "Outsiders" tells the story of the Farrell clan, a family of outsiders who've been in these parts since before anyone can remember. Living off the grid and above the law on their mountaintop homestead, they'll protect their world and defend their way of life using any means necessary.

Set in the town of Buckner, Missouri, "Outlaw Country" chronicles the perennial battle between law enforcement and crime by following Steve and Mike Cook, brothers who act as Sheriff and head of the Buckner Criminal Task Force, respectively, as they clash with John and Josh Monk, brothers they suspect are responsible for the town's surge in crime. In this one hour docudrama, producers were given full access to both the police force and the Monk Brothers' camp, providing an unprecedented look at crime in a small town from both sides of the law.

The WGN Morning News is an American morning television news program airing on CW affiliate and national superstation WGN-TV in Chicago, Illinois. The newscast airs Monday through Friday mornings from 4:00-10:00 a.m. Central Time. The program is formatted as a newscast with a somewhat less serious tone than WGN-TV's other local news programs and is known for its fun and rambunctious nature, with the anchors and reporters often shown more relaxed on-air, often pulling on-air pranks and practical jokes. The 4:00-6:00 a.m. portion of the newscast is more staid in tone to some extent and is a more generalized news/weather/sports/traffic format, while the 6:00-10:00 a.m. portion incorporates feature segments, interviews and includes some humorous elements.

In the aftermath of an extraterrestrial event, six visitation zones are created on Earth, each containing supernatural properties.

Funniest Pets & People is a fast-paced American television series that showcases funny home videos of pets and people of all ages and is produced by Brad Lachman's Genco Entertainment, Inc., and it's broadcast on various local TV stations in the United States for daily syndication. Similar in the style of America's Funniest Home Videos, this show is narrated by Rob Paulsen and it includes laughing audience members in the background, although some footage in the show has real laughter. This show, along with AFV, sometimes uses sound effects for fun. It was originally syndicated by Sony Pictures Television's Program Partners from 2006 to 2008, then The Program Exchange took over syndication from 2008 when production ended.

Family Classics is a Chicago television series which began in 1962 when Frazier Thomas was added to another program at WGN-TV. Thomas not only hosted classic films but also selected the titles and personally edited them to remove those scenes which he thought were not fit for family viewing. After Thomas' death in 1985, Roy Leonard took over the program. The series continued sporadically until its cancellation in 2000. A few props from the Family Classics set are on exhibit at Chicago's Museum of Broadcast Communications.

Inside the Vault is an American news magazine television show hosted by Cris Collinsworth that focuses on today’s American man. The show debuted online on February 3, 2011, and February 4, 2011 on WGN America. After its first season no plans were announced for a second season.

The BJ and Dirty Dragon Show is a Chicago children's television program that aired on WFLD and later WGN-TV from 1968 to 1974. It starred Bill Jackson and his puppets.

Illinois Instant Riches is a lottery game show airing in the state of Illinois, as well as nationally on Chicago-based Superstation WGN-TV. The show was hosted by former MTV VJ Mark Goodman, with Linda Kollmeyer as his co-host and Bill Barber as announcer. The show was produced by Mark Goodson Productions, and premiered on July 9, 1994. The show was renamed Illinois' Luckiest in 1998 and aired until 2000. For contestants to appear on the show, they must have bought an Illinois Instant Riches/Illinois' Luckiest scratch-off ticket from an Illinois Lottery retailer. If they uncover three TVs, then the ticket is sent in to the given address. Players were randomly chosen from those tickets to be in the show's contestant pool, but only a certain number of them would be selected to play an on-stage game. Several of the games on this show were transported to and from some other lottery game shows, most notable, Flamingo Fortune, Bonus Bonanza, and NY Wired; the differences are mentioned in this article. Elements from these games also carried over to the current quarterly-based Michigan Lottery game show Make Me Rich.

Chicagoland Mystery Players was a live television series first shown on local station WGN-TV in Chicago starting in 1947, then picked up by the DuMont Television Network and first aired on the network September 11, 1949. The 30-minute show aired on Sundays at 8pm ET. The series was one of several on DuMont that began in a local TV market before being picked up nationally. DuMont dropped the program on July 23, 1950, and it's unknown if it continued in Chicago for any time. When the series aired on WGN-TV in Chicago, viewers were not given the solution to the crime. Instead they were told to pick up the next day's Chicago Tribune to find out the solution to the mystery. WGN-TV was owned by the Tribune.