Floyd Kalber (December 23, 1924 – May 13, 2004) was an American

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...

and

anchorman A news presenter – also known as a newsreader, newscaster (short for "news broadcaster"), anchorman or anchorwoman, news anchor or simply an anchor – is a person who presents news during a news program on TV, radio or the Internet ...

, nicknamed "The Big Tuna."

Life and career

Born in

Omaha, Nebraska Omaha ( ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Douglas County. Omaha is in the Midwestern United States on the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's 39th-largest cit ...

, he spent two years in the army during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

and began his television career as

KMTV KMTV-TV (channel 3) is a television station in Omaha, Nebraska, United States, affiliated with CBS. Owned by the E. W. Scripps Company, the station has studios on Mockingbird Drive in southwest Omaha, and its transmitter is located on a "tower ...

-Omaha's first newscaster. It was at KMTV that he mentored his most famous protégé,

Tom Brokaw Thomas John Brokaw (; born February 6, 1940) is an American retired network television journalist and author. He first served as the co-anchor of ''The Today Show'' from 1976 to 1981 with Jane Pauley, then as the anchor and managing editor of '' ...

. Having attracted national attention for his coverage of the manhunt for mass-murderers

Charles Starkweather Charles Raymond Starkweather (November 24, 1938 – June 25, 1959) was an American spree killer who murdered eleven people in Nebraska and Wyoming between December 1957 and January 1958, when he was nineteen years old. He killed ten of his victi ...

and Caril Ann Fugate, in 1962 he became a popular anchorman for WNBQ-TV (later known as WMAQ),

NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

's owned-and-operated station in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. The 10 p.m. broadcast on weeknights, named ''NBC News Night Report'', quickly became Chicago's top-rated news program and at one point, the most-watched television program in the city. It continued its ratings lead until WLS' introduction of the so-called "happy talk" news format in 1968. In the late 1960s, Kalber also began doing five-minute news digests in early and late afternoon timeslots on NBC from the WMAQ studios, during which a national audience became familiar with his work. For a time in the early 1970s, he anchored Sunday broadcasts of ''

NBC Nightly News ''NBC Nightly News'' (titled as ''NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt'' for its weeknight broadcasts since June 22, 2015) is the flagship daily evening News broadcasting#Television, television news program for NBC News, the news division of the NB ...

.'' In 1975 WMAQ paired Kalber with the then-unknown

Jane Pauley Margaret Jane Pauley (born October 31, 1950) is an American television host, and author, active in news reporting since 1972. Pauley first became widely known as Barbara Walters's successor on the NBC morning show ''Today'', beginning at the age ...

, who was recruited from

WISH A wish is a hope or desire for something. In fiction, wishes can be used as plot devices. In folklore, opportunities for "making a wish" or for wishes to "come true" or "be granted" are themes that are sometimes used. In fiction In fictio ...

in Indianapolis; this arrangement did not succeed. Pauley left a year later to become the new co-anchor for NBC's ''

Today Show ''Today'' (also called ''The Today Show'' or informally, ''NBC News Today'') is an American news and talk morning television show that airs weekdays from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. on NBC. The program debuted on January 14, 1952. It w ...

''. Moving to national broadcasting for the NBC television network and departing WMAQ, Kalber was one of the most visible broadcasters in the country from 1976 to 1981 while anchoring the news on ''Today,'' working with hosts Brokaw and Pauley. Kalber was unhappy doing the ''Today'' show, and he left the program in late 1979. He remained with NBC News as a correspondent, after which he retired from the network in 1981. Kalber was coaxed back into broadcasting in 1984 by Chicago station WLS, where he anchored the 6 p.m. evening newscast until his final retirement in 1998. He died at his suburban Chicago home on May 13, 2004, after a long battle with emphysema. He was 79.

External links

*
Floyd Kalber biographyOfficial site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kalber, Floyd American television journalists Television anchors from Chicago NBC News people People from Omaha, Nebraska 1924 births 2004 deaths People from Hinsdale, Illinois American male journalists United States Army personnel of World War II