Career
Born in Rochester, New York, Weinstein's broadcast career began while he was in high school, working at WHAM Radio as an actor on several locally produced programs. After professional stops in Iowa and West Virginia, he was hired as a newscaster and news director at WKBW Radio in Buffalo in 1958. His fast-paced style featuring strong writing and alliteration ("pistol-packing punks" referring to petty criminals, or "Buffalo blaze busters" in place of firefighters) helped take the newscast ratings to #1 in the Western New York market.
In 1964, Weinstein was hired as news director and anchorman at sister station WKBW-TV, an ABC Network affiliate. At the time, the station's news programs were rated #3 in a three-station market. By 1974, WKBW-TV's Eyewitness News program had an audience larger than the combined audience of the two competing Buffalo stations. It remained the top-rated newscast until Weinstein's retirement in 1998 and beyond. Weinstein's innovations would later be adapted by Mel Kampmann for the national "Action News" franchise.
In 1968, Weinstein briefly returned to his broadcast beginnings as an actor in WKBW radio's Halloween adaptation of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds. Weinstein also appeared in a 1971 remake, which was re-run in 1998. During his 40-year career in Buffalo, Weinstein appeared in numerous theater productions and operated The Playhouse, a theater in downtown Buffalo in the early 1980s.
A WKBW-TV promo for Eyewitness News included a jingle:
- "Irv Weinstein, you're really a pro!
- Ya got all the news that we wanna know.
- You tell it like it is and never throw us a curve,
- Nobody says it like Ir-r-r-r-v !
- Eye-wit-ness News (Yes-sah!)"
The day of his retirement, December 31, 1998, was proclaimed "Irv Weinstein Day in Erie County" by then-Erie County Executive Dennis Gorski. Five days later, Toronto columnist David Frum penned a tribute titled "He came from Buffalo" in Canada's National Post newspaper, writing, "The way the French feel about Jerry Lewis, that's how we feel about Irv Weinstein". In October 2004, Weinstein's status as "an icon of television journalism in Buffalo" was discussed on the floor of the Ontario Legislature by MPP Tim Hudak.
Weinstein was known for using alliteration in his reporting. He coined the phrases "Topping tonight's Eyewitness News" and "It's eleven o'clock. Do you know where your children are?", both of which are in frequent use in other news broadcasts.
Read more about this topic: Irv Weinstein
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