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.
