Death DepressionĬhubbuck spoke to her family at length about her struggles with depression and suicidal tendencies, though she did not inform them of her intent to die by suicide on live television. On occasion, Chubbuck incorporated homemade puppets she had used to entertain children with intellectual disabilities during her volunteer work at Sarasota Memorial Hospital. He had been scheduled to appear as a guest on Chubbuck's show the morning of her suicide, but canceled because of the birth of his son. Chubbuck was considered a "strong contender" by district forester Mike Keel. After her death, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported that she had been nominated for a Forestry and Conservation Recognition Award by the Bradenton district office of the Florida Division of Forestry. Ĭhubbuck took her position seriously, inviting local officials from Sarasota and Bradenton to discuss matters of interest to the growing beach community. It will give attention, for instance, to the storefront organizations that are concerned with alcoholics, drug users, and other 'lost' segments of the community." Page five of the article showed a smiling Chubbuck posed with a WXLT camera. Acker described Chubbuck's new show to a local paper: "It will feature local people and local activities. WXLT's owner, Bob Nelson, hired Chubbuck as a reporter, but later gave her a community affairs talk show, Suncoast Digest, which ran at 9:00 am. Chubbuck had a close relationship with her family, describing her mother and Greg as her closest friends. When Greg left, her elder brother Tim moved in. After Chubbuck's parents were divorced, her mother Peg and younger brother Greg came to live in the Florida home. Sally Quinn of The Washington Post later reported that she had painted the bedroom and canopied bed to look like that of a young teenager. Several years before her death, Chubbuck had moved into her family's summer cottage on Siesta Key. Immediately before joining ABC affiliate WXLT-TV (now WWSB), she worked in the traffic department of WTOG in St. In 1968, Chubbuck left WQED to spend four years as a hospital computer operator and two years with a cable television firm in Sarasota, Florida. That same year, she worked in Canton, Ohio, and, for three months, at WQED-TV in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as an assistant producer for two local shows, Women's World and Keys to the City. Career Early workĬhubbuck worked for WVIZ in Cleveland between 19, and attended a summer workshop in radio and television at New York University in 1967. Chubbuck attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, for one year, majoring in theater arts, then attended Endicott College in Beverly, Massachusetts, before earning a degree in broadcasting at Boston University in 1965. During her years at Laurel, she jokingly formed a "Dateless Wonder Club" with other "rejected" girls who did not have dates on Saturday nights. Chubbuck attended the Laurel School for Girls in Shaker Heights, a suburb of Cleveland. Early lifeĬhristine Chubbuck was born in Hudson, Ohio, the daughter of Margaretha D. She was the first person to die by suicide on a live television broadcast. It seems, then, that the wait to see a tape nobody really needs to see continues.Being the first person to die by suicide on live televisionĬhristine Chubbuck (Aug– July 15, 1974) was an American television news reporter who worked for stations WTOG and WXLT-TV in Sarasota, Florida. She says she has no plans to ever make it available and only held on to the tape to honor her husband’s wishes. The attempts made her uncomfortable, so she gave it to an unnamed “very large law firm” for safekeeping. But after the Sundance debut of the quasi-documentary Kate Plays Christine, in which a former news station employee suggests that Nelson might have the tape, people started contacting her asking to see it. When he died, it stayed in her possession. How kyuss got the video is the question since Vulture reported in June the tape of the on-air suicide had been kept by the widow of the man who owned the station at the time of Chubbuck’s death, Robert Nelson. Yesterday, a YouTube user named kyuss uploaded a grainy video purported to be the suicide. But the actual video of the suicide was presumed lost. Last year, two different films about Chubbuck’s suicide appeared at Sundance, one was a documentary and the other was a narrative drama. On JWXLT (now WWSB) host Christine Chubbuck pulled out a gun and shot herself live, on-air.Ĭhubbuck’s last words were “In keeping with Channel 40’s policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts and in living color, you are going to see another first – an attempted suicide.” Chubbuck, 29, died 14 hours later at Sarasota Memorial Hospital.
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