Bernard “Bud” Miller spent 27 years at WLS-AM as a news reporter and news director during the 50,000-watt station’s pop music heyday, working alonside well-known on-air personalities such as Larry Lujack, Tommy Edwards, Fred Winston and Bob Sirott.
“He built a full-service news department second to none — especially unique for a rock music station,” recalled Sirott, now WGN-AM’s morning host. “He hired a legendary news staff that included Lyle Dean, Gil Gross, Jeffrey Hendrix, Linda Marshall, Jim Johnson and Jack Swanson, among others. He was a serious newsman but we all loved him because he knew music was our number one product.”
Miller, 96, died of natural causes July 9 at his home in Glenview, said his son-in-law, Tim Pretzsch.
Born in Chicago, Miller grew up on the North Side and graduated from Sullivan High School. He received a bachelor’s degree in 1950 from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he worked both on the campus radio station and on WDWS-AM in Champaign. After college, Miller served in the Army, working an announcer, producer and director for the Armed Forces Network in Stuttgart, Germany.
Miller worked briefly at a television station in Madison, Wisconsin, before returning to Chicago in 1961 for a job as a reporter and anchor at WLS. He anchored the station’s coverage of the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. In 1973, he was promoted to news director.
Miller was committed to diversifying the station’s predominantly male news staff. In 1973, he hired Linda Marshall to be just the station’s second-ever female news anchor and reporter.
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“As his hire, I was loyal to him, but for good reason,” Marshall said. “He was all business, no nonsense as a news director, but also a very fair, kind, genuine and charming man.”
During the 1970s, WLS’ disc jockeys were some of Chicago’s best-known celebrities. Another member of his news department in that decade, Lyle Dean, noted that the station’s then-owner, the ABC network, had a solid reputation for news.
“Bud was tasked with maintaining that reputation at a rock ‘n’ roll radio station whose popularity was infused with hijinks of the disc jockeys — not an easy job, but he did it well and earned the respect of everyone at the station,” Dean said.
Edwards recalled how WLS had hourly newscasts, and while reporters had different styles, “everyone followed Bud’s uniform format.”
“He also had the unique gift of spotting new talent in young people who would eventually have long careers in radio journalism,” Edwards said.
Miller, who was elected president of the Illinois Broadcasters Association in 1974, was a staunch advocate for his staff. In 1976, at the behest of ABC bosses in New York, WLS cut back its newscasts by about 25%. That meant cutting the length of many newscasts and eliminating others altogether. A Tribune article at the time noted that the cutbacks were implemented “over the strenuous objections of Bud Miller.”
Sirott called Miller “a serious newsman” who made sure the station’s news coverage was the number-one product. Sirott also recalled Miller’s sense of humor and the fact that he never looked down on WLS’ music disc jockeys.
“I think in his solid journalist’s heart, Bud was a fan of what guys like Lujack and Winston and (John Records) Landecker and the rest of us were doing,” Sirott said. “And that made him a great person to work with.”
In 1988, Miller left WLS in a cost-cutting move and took a job handling communications for then-Attorney General Neil Hartigan. He later briefly oversaw Shadow Traffic’s news operations, then worked at an Ace Hardware store in Glenview for many years.
“He really enjoyed that,” his son-in-law said. “He was a really handy guy.”
Two marriages ended in divorce.
Other survivors include two daughters, Dona Miller and Vicki Harbick; and two grandsons.
A private service is planned.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.