Once upon a time, local television news actually was informative.
The broadcasts weren't loaded with sensational crap and goofy features.
Those days are gone, and now so is the long-time anchorman of Channel 4, John McCullough.
From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
Even in so-called retirement, John McCullough remained a newsman.
He was best known as the respected anchor at WTMJ-TV (Channel 4) - long the station's lone anchorman at 5 and 10 - until he officially retired in 1988. He went on to start McCullough Productions, producing award-wining documentaries for WMVS-TV (Channel 10) and WTMJ.
"John was an icon in the TV news business in Milwaukee," said Mike Gousha, now distinguished fellow in law and public policy at Marquette University. "At a time when viewership for TV news was at its zenith, there was nobody bigger than John."
That said, McCullough didn't act it.
"It was always about the news," said Gousha, who found a mentor in McCullough as a young reporter at WTMJ. "It wasn't about John."
McCullough died Wednesday at a hospital in South Bend, Ind. He was 77. He collapsed Sunday while with his wife, Sandy, at their summer-and-football-season home in Granger near South Bend. No cause of death is known, but it might have resulted from a heart rhythm problem.
...McCullough joined WTMJ-TV in 1967. The station is owned by Journal Communications, which publishes the Journal Sentinel.
"McCullough personified the station," wrote Mike Drew, then TV-radio critic for The Milwaukee Journal. "Older, sincere, solid to the point of stolid, unflashy to the borderline of dull. But also, year after year, reliable, right and no-nonsense."
..."He was a legend," said Hank Stoddard, former WTMJ sports director and a longtime friend. "He was not big on too much happy talk - he could throw a one-liner out - but he didn't tolerate the fluff that you see today on TV news."
When he decided to step down, McCullough made the announcement himself - on his 5 p.m. newscast.
"I spent 22 years here breaking stories, and I wanted to break my own retirement," he said.
I can still hear McCullough's sign-off after the 10:00 news, before Johnny Carson's Tonight Show: "Sleep warm."
Rest in Peace.
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