Irv Weinstein

Career

Born in Rochester, New York, Weinstein began his broadcast career 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 stage productions and, in the early 1980s, co-owned The Playhouse, a legit theater in downtown Buffalo.

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 wrote 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.[1]

Weinstein was known for using alliteration in his reporting. Either he or WNEW-TV's Mel Epstein coined the phrase "It's 11:00. Do you know where your children are?," a public service announcement now used on numerous other U.S. stations. The phrase "topping tonight's Eyewitness News" continues to be used to open WKBW's newscasts to the present day.

Personal life

Weinstein and his wife Elaine currently reside at an assisted living facility in Mission Viejo, California. The two have been married since 1955. Their daughter, Beth Krom, served two terms as mayor of the nearby city of Irvine and now serves on the City Council. The Weinsteins' son, Marc, is co-owner of Amoeba Music, and their younger daughter, Rachel, is an artist and theater administrator in the Pittsburgh area.

In summer 2016, Weinstein was diagnosed with amyotropic lateral sclerosis, after first experiencing symptoms of the disease in March. As of November 2016, he can no longer walk but still had full function of his arms and torso and is in good mental condition; he was given a prognosis of five years to live and could still speak (with some audible difficulty as the disease also affects his breathing). By April 2017, Weinstein was no longer able to speak and communicated solely by typing.