Word: wbbm
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...demand for anchors spurted as local stations across the U.S. expanded their news coverage; Los Angeles' KNXT last month introduced a 2½-hour newscast, and a number of stations (Los Angeles' KNBC, Chicago's WBBM and New York's WNBC among them) mount three shows a night. Local news operations, once money-losing public service efforts, have become universally profitable; at many stations news is the most important source of income. Now anchors and their agents routinely play one station against another at contract-renewal time, and the stations pay up willingly...
...find, and keep, an anchor with that certain something -looks, sex appeal, credibility-that viewers like. A single ratings point in a major market like New York, Los Angeles or Chicago is worth more than $500,000 in yearly station revenues. When executives at Chicago's CBS-owned WBBM this year figured they would lose three evening-news ratings points if Anchor Bill Kurtis jumped to NBC-owned WMAQ, they won him back by counteroffering $250,000 a year. They considered it a bargain. Says Joe Saltzman, a veteran TV newsman who teaches broadcasting at the University of Southern...
...years of experience as reporters and still dash out of the studio like Dalmatians when a big story breaks. Washington's David Schoumacher put in two decades as a newspaper reporter and network correspondent before joining Washington's WJLA as anchor last year (at $120,000), and WBBM's Walter Jacobson ($140,000) is one of Chicago's most respected political reporters. Says New York's Larry Kane, a radio reporter at 15: "The press is abusive to say we're all mannequins. There are no major anchormen in the U.S. who are phonies...
Madigan, 59, is a press critic. Unlike his print-bound counterparts in other cities, he chastises the profession via the rather quaint medium of radio-for 2½ minutes five days a week over WBBM, the CBS-owned station for which he doubles as political editor. In addition, Madigan is closely tied to the still clanking municipal machine of the late Mayor Richard Daley, a rare alliance for a newsman in these post-Watergate days of pol bashing. Indeed, while other reporters stood outside in the cold, Madigan was allowed to broadcast Daley's funeral live from inside...
...evening American (it died in 1974 as Chicago Today) and rose to become political editor before working in Washington for Hearst and Newsweek. He was a regular panelist on CBS's Face the Nation for nearly five years, then returned to his home town. After becoming WBBM-TV news director, he switched to the network's AM radio outlet in 1968. Snide and thunderous on the air, Madigan at home in his lakefront high-rise is a man of quiet humor, Irish-pol anecdotes and a smile as wide as the Dan Ryan Expressway...