He currently anchors the 6-10 am segment of WGN Morning News providing weather reports and bantering with the show’s morning team. Konrad started at WGN-TV in 1996 after working in newsrooms in Tampa Bay, Montgomery, Alabama and Chicagoland Television News (CLTV). It’s crazy that it’s been on for like 26 or 27 years and it has had the success that it has had, but I am thrilled to be a part of it.” We also are going to try to have some fun along the way and try to do this entertainment personality-driven show. “I think what we have been trying to do here for a while now is to provide this alternative where we’re gonna give you the content that you need to know. But you also don’t want to, at the end of watching the news cast, feel like you need to go run out into traffic to off-yourself because the day is filled with such miserable news,” Konrad said. You want to be informed about what’s going on. But I also think they don’t want to be beat up every morning with the worst news of the day. “I think that news you can get it anywhere.
The ratings also show WGN News at 7 am grew its Adult 25 to 54 ratings by 6 percent compared to the year before, allowing the WGN Morning News show to continue its 10-year reign as the Number 1 rated news program from 6 to 9 am with Adults aged 25 to 54.
Recent ratings show WGN Morning News finished the February sweeps in the Number 1 spot with Adults between the ages of 25 and 54 (at 4 am, 5 am, 6 am, 7 am, and 9 am) widening the gap with other TV competition in each hour. That formula works and has put the WGN Morning News at the top of TV ratings. Today, Konrad is one of several meteorologists for WGN TV, appearing during the morning news segment with anchors Larry Potash and Robin Baumgarten, and sports reporter Pat Tomasulo where the hard news reports are often mixed with humorous segments. It turned out to be a pivotal day for me in the long term of my career because it moved me ultimately into the weather side of things which has lasted me a good 20 or 30 years,” Konrad said of that assignment. “That was the beginning of me getting out of hard news and really beginning to pursue forecasting. But he said some journalists “are just wired differently.” Konrad said he isn’t criticizing hard-edged journalists who go into tragedy and set aside their emotions in interviews with families of victims. “At the end of the day, I said screw this. “I’m a tender-hearted guy and my heart was broken for this woman and her daughter,” Konrad said during the interview. Konrad went back, apologized to the mother for asking about the killing, got the story, and soon left the news side of the business switching to meteorology at the encouragement of a friend who worked in the weather department in 1988. Reporting back to his editor without interviewing the mother, he was told to go back or be fired. And I am going to go ask her for an interview, to talk to me in the middle of all of this? It just didn’t sit well with me. … It was disturbing and sad to see all of this in front of me, right? Then I’m thinking, ah, somehow or another I have to talk to this lady who is in hysterics. “I showed up with my camera and there was this 16-year-old boy dead on the front lawn of this house and his mother and sister were in hysterics and I pulled up with my camera to take pictures of it and I was supposed to interview the mom or get some sound from there,” Konrad said, noting the mother and daughter were distraught and he felt shamed by the assignment. The experience changed his life and his career, he said during a wide-ranging interview on the “It’s Not So Late Show” with Aaron Hanania this week. Only 22-years-old at the time, Konrad said he felt disturbed and shamed to ask the distraught and grieving mother about her son’s death as the boy’s body was on the front lawn of the woman’s home. Paul Konrad, the 9-time Emmy Award winning Weather anchor for the WGN Morning News, said he left the news role and became a meteorologist after being interviewing a mother who had just lost her son to gun violence. WGN’s Paul Konrad offers deep look into his career on the “It’s Not So Late Show” with Aaron Hanania Nine time Emmy Award winning weatherman Paul Konrad talks about his career from news reporting to meteorology, his colleagues, and why the combination of serious news reporting and a strong edge of humor has made WGN Morning News the top-rated news program in Chicagoland during an appearance this week on the “It’s Not So Late Show” with Aaron Hanania.