May 6, 2008 6:32 pm US/Central
40th Anniversary Today For WBBM Newsradio 780
Staff Celebrate With Live Broadcast From Daley Plaza, Free Cake For Listeners
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
Forty years ago Tuesday, WBBM Newsradio 780 began its tenure as an all-news station, and the staff are celebrating in style.
WBBM 780 anchors Sherman Kaplan and Kris Kridel broadcast the Noon Business Hour from Daley Plaza Tuesday, and visitors were offered a free piece of 40th anniversary cake to accompany their traffic and weather on the eights.
"It looks like a Bears game is supposed to start, there's so many people out here," WBBM 780 General Manager Rod Zimmerman said as he cut the cake.
At 7:04 p.m. Tuesday night, WBBM 780 will broadcast "40 Years of Memories: How It All Started," a retrospective with interviews, bloopers and other memorable moments.
In the late 1960s, WBBM-AM had been an all-talk station called "The Talk of Chicago," and before that, they had featured showmanship and radio theatre. But in May 1968, in a period in history infamous for civil unrest in Chicago and across the nation, news director John Callaway led the transition to an all-news station.
CBS 2's Susan Carlson reports Kaplan and Kridel have worked at the radio station for decades and have their own favorite moments.
"I like the memories I have of the newsroom when there's a breaking news story and we all jump on it," Kridel said.
"The death of Mayor Daley, Mayor Washington, the crash of the Wabash street 'L', terrible things that have happened, but that's when news people go to work," Kaplan said.
Technology has certainly changed the news gathering process over the years. Producer Leon Colvin has been at WBBM almost from the start.
"We've gone from teletype machines to computers to get our news and get it on the air faster," Colvin said.
But the more things change, the more they stay the same.
"Chicago politics has not changed in the past 37 years. Different players, different faces, but the way politics are run in Chicago is basically the same," Colvin said.
And just as it has for four decades, Newsradio 780 is still there to cover it all.
To celebrate 40 years in the business of covering the news, WBBM 780 has also created a Web site,
http://www.wbbm780history.com, featuring photo and video galleries showing the station's history, and audio archives showcasing how the news was covered for each of the last four decades.
WBBM 780 is CBS 2's sister station, and was our upstairs neighbor at 630 N. McClurg Ct. from 1956 until 2006, when they moved to 2 Prudential Plaza.
CBS 2's Susan Carlson contributed to this report.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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