WGN goes flat, angular with new sports graphics

For game stats, WGN opted to use centered banners on the top and bottom of the screen — with the top bar, which remains on screen during most of the station’s coverage, featuring the score, a top or bottom inning indicator and base load. 

The WGN Sports logo appears as a transparent bug in the upper right of the screen. 

In addition, a portion of the bar rotates between pitch speed, ball and strike counts, quick stats and other information.

The bottom bar, meanwhile, is used less frequently and is devoted to player and team stats. 

The WGN Sports logo makes another appearance in the wipe used to delineate between replays and live footage, along with a bold and simple blue background accented with angled elements and lines.

In addition to the new graphics, WGN also updated the open used at the top of each game.

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After a hard-hitting tone, an announcer says “The following is a presentation of WGN Sports,” before a brief mix of historic Chicago baseball, basketball and hockey footage is shown inside of an animated off white mask with natural sound in the background. 

After this, the open is tailored to the sport in question.

Since the package launched with the start of baseball season, the versions used at the start feature the Cubs logo inside of a hexagon and a mix of archival footage with action timed to the beat of the music.

Next up, oversized version of the letters “W,” “G” and “N” are shown on screen, also matched to the notes in the music, before the full logo is revealed followed by another hexagon surrounding the team and sport name.

Like most markets, the local sports broadcasting scene is complex. 

Due to rights restrictions, WGN’s national cable network, WGN America, no longer carries the station’s Chicago sports coverage, so the graphics will not be seen on that channel. 

In addition to WGN, ABC O&O WLS and the NBC Sports Chicago cable network divvy up the rights to Cubs broadcast rights locally and each use their own looks for their own coverage.

In addition, each of these broadcasters also sub-license their own game coverage to stations in Iowa, Illinois and Indiana. 

The current deal with local broadcaster expires at the end of the 2019 season, and multiple media outlets have reported that the Cubs will take back their broadcast rights and launch their own media network.