- Bill Burns (anchor)
Bill Burns (
1913 -September 16 ,1997 ) was an American journalist and news anchor.Burns anchored the news for over three decades (1953-1989) in Pittsburgh, where he worked for KDKA, which was the largest station in the market.
Career
Burns was a native of Philadelphia. After serving in
World War II and earning aPurple Heart , Burns came to Pittsburgh in 1946 to work for radio stationKQV . He settled in Pittsburgh with his wife, and the couple subsequently had two children, Michael and Patti.He worked for KQV until 1953, when he went to work for what was then WDTV, Channel 3. (WDTV was originally identified as a
DuMont Television Network affiliate, but became aCBS affiliate and changed its call letters to KDKA and its frequency to Channel 2 in 1955.)Burns was a familiar face to Pittsburghers; for much of the time he was at KDKA, he anchored the noon and 11 p.m. newscasts. Burns became a part of journalism history when in 1976, he began to share anchoring duties with daughter
Patti Burns , who had become an anchor in her own right. Their pairing, initially derided as "The Patti and Daddy Show" garnered high ratings. [http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/specialreports/10year/s_105329.html]It was Bill Burns who broke into "
The Mike Douglas Show " around 1:40 PM on November 22, 1963 to report the shooting of President Kennedy in Dallas, Texas. He would remain on the air for several hours that day.Burns was noted for being a driven reporter who would often inject his personal opinion into a news story, such as when the
Pittsburgh Penguins replaced their popular "skating penguin" logo with the "flying penguin" logo. (Burns would call the "flying penguin" logo apigeon , though the team has since brought back the "skating penguin" logo.) He was also prone to making jokes and off-the-cuff comments; he once introduced the soap opera that followed his newscast as "The Young and the Breastless".Burns died on
September 16 ,1997 , at the age of 84.External links
* [http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/specialreports/10year/s_105329.html Bill Burns on a list of Pittsburgh figures]
* [http://user.pa.net/~ejjeff/burns.html Fan page for KQV radio]
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