WMAQ Channel 5 - NewsCenter5 - "Goodbye Floyd Kalber" (6/18/1976)

Here's a little piece of history - the closing moments of the final edition of NewsCenter5 with Floyd Kalber and Jane Pauley, before "The Big Tuna" left after 16 years with the station (known as WNBQ until 1964) to join the Today show in New York where he would handle the news updates through 1981. Features appearances from:

Barry Bernson during the end of one of his "Barry's People" segments, around the Lakefront, with the Lake Street Bridge in the background, showing off a tattoo he received which reads, "& Finally... Good Luck Floyd" (he switches from regular glasses to sunglasses to signify changes he says one goes through when having a tattoo put on)

WGN Channel 9's Jack Taylor, from the NewsNine set, reminiscing about Floyd and the few times they were in the same company

Bill Kurtis and Walter Jacobson of WBBM's Channel Two News, from their newsroom, with Walter relating how he worked with Floyd for two years, then Bill relating how Floyd remained no-nonsense even with the incursion of "Happy Talk" onto the scene; speaking of which...

Fahey Flynn and Joel Daly of WLS Channel 7's Eyewitness News (and from their set), sending their best wishes

Followed by closing comments from sportscaster Tim Weigel, weatherman Jim Tilmon, and Jane herself, then Floyd gives his thanks to his colleagues and competitors before closing the program

NewsCenter5 title on lower-third, with "NBC Radio-TV Newspulse" theme by Fred Weinberg as camera zooms out (and tape cuts out)

(There are several ironic postscripts to this. A few months after this newscast, Jane herself left WMAQ to become a co-host of Today, a position she would hold through 1989, thus she and Floyd were semi-reunited at 30 Rockefeller Plaza for a few years. Mr. Kalber would return to Chicago TV in 1984, as an anchor on WLS's Eyewitness News, just a year after Fahey Flynn's death - and in the same year Channel 7's former jester-weatherman, John Coleman, began a run for several years at Floyd's old stomping grounds of WMAQ.)

This aired on local Chicago TV on Friday, June 18th 1976 at about 5 minutes to 6:00pm.

This was from a tape donated to The Museum of Classic Chicago Television as part of The Mike and Britta Fayette Collection.

About The Museum of Classic Chicago Television:

The Museum of Classic Chicago Television's primary mission is the preservation and display of off-air, early home videotape recordings (70s and early 80s, primarily) recorded off of any and all Chicago TV channels; footage which would likely be lost if not sought out and preserved digitally. Even though (mostly) short clips are displayed here, we preserve the entire broadcasts in our archives - the complete programs with breaks (or however much is present on the tape), for historical purposes. For information on how to help in our mission, to donate or lend tapes to be converted to DVD, and to view more of the 4,700+ (and counting) video clips available for viewing in our online archive, please visit us at:
http://www.fuzzymemories.tv/index.php...