Nexstar To Shutter Chicago Cable News Channel CLTV

Nexstar Media Group, which bought Tribune Media in September, is shutting down Chicago cable news channel CLTV at the end of the month.

According to The Chicago Tribune, the decision, which ends a 26-year run for the pioneering local all-news channel, was announced in an email to staff Monday from Paul Rennie, general manager of WGN-TV and CLTV.

“CLTV has had a great run since it first signed on...but the media landscape has changed dramatically since that time,” Rennie said in the email obtained by the Tribune. “Unfortunately, with news now available 24 hours-a-day, seven days-a-week across a variety of multi-media platforms, it has become increasingly difficult for CLTV to hold on to its audience and remain competitive, despite the high-quality of the local journalism it produces.”

Sources said there are about a dozen employees at CLTV.  There will be a “small reduction of staff” as a result of the decision and most of the employees “will have the opportunity to apply for open jobs at WGN-TV,” Rennie said in the email.

CLTV launched in January 1993, bringing 24/7 local news to Chicago cable viewers before national news channels became cable powerhouses. While CNN launched in 1980, networks such as MSNBC and Fox News didn’t hit the air until 1996.

The channel’s name initially stood for ChicagoLand TV, employing a moniker coined decades earlier by Col. Robert R. McCormick, the former publisher of the Chicago Tribune. At its inception, CLTV was under the same corporate umbrella as the Tribune. But the cable channel owed much of its programming to WGN, which supplied everything from news content to Cubs baseball games over the years. CLTV also produced its own local newscasts.

Nexstar completed its $4.1 billion purchase of Chicago-based Tribune Media in September, creating the nation’s largest local TV station group and moving “Chicago’s very own” WGN-Ch. 9, national cable channel WGN America, WGN 720 AM and CLTV under the Dallas company’s ownership.