Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Goodbye and Good Luck Ben Kiningham

One of the best known voices in all of Illinois broadcast history has unplugged his microphone. Ben Kiningham has retired ending an amazing 30+ year career in broadcast news.

I don’t know that I met Ben more than once in my brief time in radio news 20 years ago. Back then he and Becky Enrietto were the voices on what I think (give me a break if I’m wrong, its been a long time) was then called the Capital Information Bureau. They sent out feeds on state news to subscribing radio stations. They were based here in Springfield (operating out of WTAX, I believe) and were invaluable to me in providing news not only from the far away state capital but from all parts of the state. There were not many days I did not use at least one CIB story and on a slow news day in Freeport, Illinois they were real life savers.

Good luck, Ben, and many, many thanks for the good work. You once made my job a whole lot easier.

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