Video Archive: KBJR Topline News and the Cheers party at the Western Tavern in 1993

This is the complete Topline News broadcast from May 20, 1993. You’ll notice it’s pretty short; that’s because from 1992 to 1998 KBJR experimented with an abbreviated 10 p.m. news program that ran about six minutes, not counting commercials, followed by a re-run of Roseanne with sports scores at bottom screen.

(This video includes two local commercials, but the national ads are edited out. Also, it should be noted that in later years Roseanne was dropped and replaced with Mad About You reruns.)

Duke Skorich is at the anchor desk with Michelle Lee. KBJR was the last stop of Skorich’s television news career. By 1995 he was hosting a radio show on WDSM-AM and later moved to KUWS-FM.

The highlight of the video is reporter Stephanie Guadian conducting a live remote from the Western Tavern, where a room full of sponges have just finished watching the last episode of Cheers. Perhaps only KBJR staff know whether there wasn’t time for an interview, or if they simply needed to get out of the segment as fast as possible to prevent the sloppy “Cliff” from asking about the “red light” three more times.

If you have a short attention span and can’t watch the whole seven-minute video above, here’s the 40-second clip from the Friendly West End:

By the way, KBJR lost its East Superior Street studio in December 1997 to an electrical fire, but continued to broadcast from the WDSE studios at UMD over the next 18 months. The present-day studio, in the remodeled GE Supply Building in Canal Park, has been in use by KBJR since mid-1999.

3 Comments

adam

about 11 years ago

"Thank you, Stephanie, it looked like fun."

Liar.

Paul Lundgren

about 11 years ago

Well, it was fun for Duke, the television audience and everyone at the Western Tavern, but maybe not for Stephanie.

Paul Lundgren

about 11 years ago

 

By the way, Stephanie Guadian hosts the morning news at KFOX-TV in El Paso, Texas, these days. Before that she was in Houston anchoring the weekend news at KTRK-TV. She also worked in Phoenix and San Francisco. She grew up in Las Cruces. 

According to her bio, handling a couple drunks at a Duluth bar ranks no higher than #3 on her dangerous assignments list.

The most exciting - and dangerous - job of her career to date was embedding with U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Stephanie spent nearly a month with troops from the 31st Combat Support Hospital based at Fort Bliss. Her journey took her to Herat, Kabul, Helmand Province, Kandahar and Mazar-i-Sharif. Stephanie says her role as a war-zone reporter was by far her most challenging and rewarding reporting. She spent weeks in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans gathering stories on Katrina and the storm's aftermath. Stephanie was also on the front lines as Hurricane Rita came ashore. Other stories have taken her to Mexico for the history of Cinco de Mayo and a series of reports on Doctors without Borders.

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