TUNING IN WITH DAN PONCE

If he belts, he leads.

WGN Morning News co-anchor Dan Ponce—wearing a white-collared shirt, blue jeans, a navy blue blazer, and white sneakers— displayed his impressive music chops on March 17, singing The Backstreet Boys’ hit “I Want It That Way” with the tribute band The Boy Band Night during the television station’s St. Patrick’s Day Extravaganza.

Ponce, 46, looked and sounded the part.

“I love both broadcasting and music,” says Ponce, who is in his 10th year as co-anchor of WGN Morning News’ 4 to 6 a.m. slot.

“Music will always be a big part of my heart,” says Ponce, who grew up in Wilmette and graduated from New Trier High School in 1995 as a two-time cross country conference champion and a serial performer in plays, musicals, and choirs.

“My dad,” he jokes, “was probably more excited about my music career than he was about my broadcasting career.”

His dad is the venerable Phil Ponce, who hosted WTTW’s program Chicago Tonight for nearly three decades before stepping down in 2022.

In 2009, Ponce’s love of music prompted his decision to leave his general assignment reporter position at ABC 7 Eyewitness News to perform with the band Straight No Chaser—the men’s a cappella group he founded while studying music and journalism at Indiana University—after the band’s debut studio album, Holiday Spirits, reached No. 1 on iTunes and Amazon.

After a one-and-a-half-year stint with Straight No Chaser, Ponce returned to broadcasting. WGN News hired the 2004 Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism graduate as a general assignment reporter in 2010. Three years later, he was named a morning news anchor.

“I feel lucky to be a morning anchor on WGN News,” says Ponce, whose brother, Anthony, lives in Wilmette and is a news anchor at FOX 32 Chicago. “WGN News is a juggernaut, the top morning news program in Chicago. Local news is important now more than ever because it doesn’t deliver the partisan news that turns so many people off.”

Ponce has worked alongside his co-anchor Lauren Jiggets for six years. “Lauren is a good friend,” he adds, “and viewers see our friendship when we’re on the air together. We’re exactly the same people off-air as we are on-air. You can’t fake chemistry.”

This is just one of the many lessons Ponce has learned over his almost two decades in broadcast news, a career that began at WLIX in Lansing, Michigan in 2005. Over all those years, the best advice he ever received came from his father.

“My dad has had a huge influence on my broadcasting career,” Ponce says. “When I was starting out, he told me, ‘Above all else, make sure your facts are accurate.’” Dad then assured his son that everything else would fall into place.

Dan Ponce and his wife, Amy, have a 10-year-old daughter, Maya, who’s a fourth-grader. She’s into math and playing the piano.

“I love fatherhood, and I love working with my daughter on subjects and activities that also interest me, especially music,” says Ponce, who occasionally writes songs for Straight No Chaser. “Glencoe is such a great place to raise a child. It’s a wonderful community, with an outstanding school system.”

“It’s also nice to get recognized, but I don’t consider that a sign of fame,” says Ponce, who wakes up at 2 a.m. each workday and is out the door by 3 a.m. “To me, it means that there’s still a strong demand for local news and that our viewers enjoy the show.”

“It pleases me to know that our show helped people start their day on a high note.”