By Rick Kaempfer
TEACHER, NEWSMAN
Roger Badesch
Y
ou may know Roger Badesch as a
news anchor. That’s what he is every
weekend on WGN Radio (720AM).
You can hear him on Friday nights
(overnight), Saturday nights (overnight) and
Sunday nights (6-Midnight), and he also fills
in occasionally during the week. But Roger
has taken an incredibly unique route to that
anchor chair; one that saw him work as a
teacher, a public relations executive, a press
agent, and more. He hadn’t really thought
about the interconnectedness of those various
jobs until he was asked about them, but he
admits there are some similarities.
“All of them are about connecting with
people. That’s what I love. Connecting with
the listeners, and being able to inform them
what is going on, that draws me to the news.
I found my second calling in education years
later, which I did for twenty years, and there
is an even more direct connection there. You
can see people grow right in front of you.
When I did public relations for the mayor’s
press office (’81-’85, for Jane Byrne and
Harold Washington), the part of the job I
enjoyed the most was helping the public get
to know about the good projects – the serious
work that was being done to help people. I
guess it is all interconnected. I enjoy educating. I don’t think about it while I’m doing it,
but I guess now that you mention it, they are
all similar.”
18 illinoisentertainer.com january 2016
But despite loving all of those jobs, radio is
special to Badesch. “I love it from the second I
walk in the door until the moment I leave. I’m
a child of radio. I grew up in Chicago with the
transistor radio under the pillow, listening to
rock radio on WLS and WCFL. I still have
vivid images of my dad listening to the Cubs
games in the garage, listening to the Bears
games with Jack Brickhouse and Irv Kupcinet.
It must be in my blood. My persona changes
when I walk in the door at WGN – because it
feels like I’m in heaven.”
His career has now come full circle. Radio
was also his first job, many years ago. “I don’t
even want to say how many years ago,” he
jokes. “I started in high school in the late '60s,
and then in college too. After I graduated
from SIU, I worked in Las Vegas for 3 years
and that was a blast. Vegas was and is a starstudded town. I interviewed Jerry Lewis.
Covered the big sporting events. The heavyweight championship bouts. The tennis tournaments. That was so much fun, and it was a
great education. I got to make my mistakes
there.”
That Vegas gig led to his big break in his
hometown. “In the late '70s I worked at Q-101,
and we had a pretty big newsroom for an FM
station. We had a 15-minute newscast at noon
every day. My beat was City Hall. I had a desk
in the radio room there. I sat next to all the big
radio reporters like Bob Crawford, Bill
Cameron, and Jim Johnson. It was an exciting
time – Jane Byrne had just been elected.“
It was also the last radio gig he held for a
while. The radio business had begun to
change, and news departments were reduced
everywhere – especially at FM stations. After
the Q-101 newsroom was reduced, Roger
worked for the Mayor’s office, and at
Edelman PR, before going into his teaching
career Little did he know that teaching would
eventually lead him back into the broadcast
booth.
“It was really sort of a fluke. I was teaching at Chicago Vocational High School, and I
was teaching broadcasting. After a couple of
years I saw an ad for a newsperson at WGN. I
thought – my students don’t really know me,
and it would help my credibility with them,
which would help me become a better teacher,
if they could hear me on the radio. I was
afraid I was too old, or had been out of the
business too long, or that they had probably
already filled the position, but I got lucky.
Some people at WGN actually remembered
my name from Q-101, and they asked me to
come in to do an audition. They liked how I
sounded, so I got the job. It was just a right
time – right place sort of thing.”
His unique career journey isn’t the only
thing that has given Badesch perspective on
life. A few years ago he was diagnosed with
cancer. “I always tried to live in the moment
– to pack as much into every day as I could.
It’s even more so since my surgery and chemo
treatments, and because my wife has gone
through it too