News operation WLS-TV broadcasts 41 hours, 25 minutes of locally produced newscasts each week (with 6 hours, 5 minutes each weekday and 5½ hours each on Saturdays and Sundays). WLS-TV also contracts with iHeartMedia to provide weather forecasts for their Chicago market stations, including WLIT-FM (93.9), WCHI-FM (95.5), WVAZ (102.7), WKSC-FM (103.5), and WGCI-FM (107.5). News department history In 1969, WLS-TV adopted the Eyewitness News format that the other ABC owned-and-operated stations began implementing in the late 1960s, after the news format was popularized when it originated at New York City flagship WABC-TV. Beginning in 1968, the station's main evening newscasts were co-anchored by Fahey Flynn, a bowtie-wearing broadcaster who had spent the previous 15 years at WBBM-TV; and Joel Daly, who was hired away by WLS from WJW-TV in Cleveland in 1967. The duo served as the anchors of the station's 6:00 and 10:00 p.m. newscasts until Flynn's death in August 1983. In 1970, the two were joined by John Drury, who helmed the 5:00 p.m. newscast. By 1973, WLS' Eyewitness News broadcasts surpassed NBC-owned WMAQ-TV (channel 5)'s newscasts to become Chicago's top-rated news operation, a lead it held until WBBM-TV surpassed channel 7 for the top spot in 1979. For much of the 1970s and 1980s, it waged a spirited battle for second place in the Chicago news ratings between its two main competitors. By 1983, a disastrous anchor change had dropped channel 7 into third place. This prompted two major changes to the station's management; ABC brought in Dennis Swanson from WLS-TV's Los Angeles sister station KABC-TV to serve as the station's new general manager. Swanson, in turn, hired Bill Applegate as the station's news director. ABC also commissioned Frank Gari to compose an updated version of the Cool Hand Luke "Tar Sequence" theme widely associated with the Eyewitness News format. The result was "News Series 2000", a theme package that was quickly picked up by other ABC O&Os and affiliates. Swanson was instrumental in hiring Oprah Winfrey to host its then low-rated morning talk show, AM Chicago, in 1983. Within a year, the program had moved to first place in the ratings. AM Chicago entered into national syndication in 1986 and was renamed The Oprah Winfrey Show. Channel 7 was the flagship station for the show, and it, along with most of ABC's other owned-and-operated stations, carried it until it went out of production in September