Posted by chicagomedia.org on November 17, 2008 at 11:56:48:
WGN Celebrates with Holiday Specials
Robin Baumgarten and Paul Konrad will host the 75th McDonald's Thanksgiving Parade, Thanksgiving morning, Nov. 27, at 8-11 a.m. on Tribune CW affiliate WGN Chicago. Marcella Raymond will serve as street side reporter. The annual parade (formerly the State Street Christmas Parade) kicks off the 2008 holiday season traveling down historic State Street with giant balloons, high-stepping marching bands, majestic equestrian troupes, floats, performance groups and celebrities.
Immediately after the parade WGM will air its annual holiday favorite and digitally remastered Bozo, Gar & Ray: WGN-TV Classics.
Another WGN special, Chicago's Very Own Holidays, a new, original half-hour local production, will offer a nostalgic look back at Chicago Christmases past. It will premiere on Dec. 20 at 8-8:30 p.m., with an encore on Christmas Eve, Dec. 24, at 9:30-10 p.m. The special, hosted by WGN News anchor Mark Suppelsa, will span events through 100 years starting with the Chicago Tribune's 1908 predictions of Christmas.
Other program highlights will include Jim Lovell's historic 1968 Christmas Eve flight and a chat with the daughters of Robert L. May, the Chicago copywriter who penned the holiday poem "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" in 1939.
(TV Newsday)