Buzz Kilman
Encyclopedia
Radio career
He started in radio as the public serviceCommunity service
Community service is donated service or activity that is performed by someone or a group of people for the benefit of the public or its institutions....
director for WBUS-FM, "The Magic Bus" in Miami Beach, Florida
Miami Beach, Florida
Miami Beach is a coastal resort city in Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States, incorporated on March 26, 1915. The municipality is located on a barrier island between the Atlantic Ocean and Biscayne Bay, the latter which separates the Beach from Miami city proper...
. Kilman remained there until station management discovered many of his late night interviews were spoofs
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
. In 1974, he was at WSHE-FM in Ft. Lauderdale, where he did morning news and a weekend public service talk show that had many comedic spoofs.
On April Fool's Day, 1980, he went to WLUP-FM in Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
and did news for The Steve Dahl
Steve Dahl
Steven Robert Dahl has been an American radio personality and humorist for more than thirty years. He is currently podcasting, and releases the podcasts for download daily from his own website as well as the iTunes store...
Show. After Dahl was fired in 1981, Kilman did news for a series of morning personalities until he teamed up with Jonathon Brandmeier
Jonathon Brandmeier
-Career:Born John Francis Brandmeier to a German father and a Lebanese mother, Brandmeier started his radio career in 1973 at WFON in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin...
in 1983 on WLUP
WLUP
WLUP-FM is a commercial classic rock radio station serving the Chicago metropolitan area. Owned and operated by Merlin Media, LLC, WLUP transmits its signal from an antenna located the top of the Willis Tower in Downtown Chicago at a height of with an effective radiated power of 4,000 watts...
. As newsman and sidekick, Kilman broadcasted with Brandmeier for 14 years on the Loop and AM-1000. Buzz became the morning man at the Loop for one year when Brandmeier left the station during a contract dispute in 1997. Kilman moved to WCKG
WCKG
WCFS-FM , known on-air as "WBBM Newsradio 780 & 105.9", is a radio station licensed to Elmwood Park, Illinois and serving the Chicago, Illinois market...
in January, 1999 to rejoin Brandmeier. Stalled contract negotiations between CBS and Brandmeier in January, 2001 caused Kilman to do the mid-day show alone, and thus the Temporary Buzz Kilman Show was born. Shortly thereafter, Wendy Snyder was brought on as a co-host for the now temporary-less Buzz Kilman Show. The show culminated with the "Blobus Festivus" outdoor music and variety show. On April 1, 2002, the duo moved to afternoons as sidekicks for the Steve Dahl show, replacing Joy Masada and Dave McBride. Wendy's contract was not renewed in the winter of 2007. On November 5, 2007, Buzz followed Steve Dahl to WJMK as they became the new morning team. This lasted until December 5, 2008 when Dahl announced the end of his show.
Musical interests
When Kilman came to Chicago, he brought his harmonica and a predisposition to the blues. In 1988 he formed the All Bubba Blues Band and played around the area for the next 5 or 6 years until the band broke up in the mid 90s. In 2001 he formed the Blues Rocket Scientists and continues to play.Appearance in films
As a result of his friendship with director Jonathan DemmeJonathan Demme
Robert Jonathan Demme is an American filmmaker, producer and screenwriter. Best known for directing The Silence of the Lambs, which won him the Academy Award for Best Director, he has also directed the acclaimed movies Philadelphia, Rachel Getting Married, the Talking Heads concert movie Stop...
, Kilman has appeared in a number of bit parts in Demme's films. For instance, he played a paramedic
Paramedic
A paramedic is a healthcare professional that works in emergency medical situations. Paramedics provide advanced levels of care for medical emergencies and trauma. The majority of paramedics are based in the field in ambulances, emergency response vehicles, or in specialist mobile units such as...
in The Silence of the Lambs (film). In the scene where Hannibal Lecter
Hannibal Lecter
Hannibal Lecter M.D. is a fictional character in a series of horror novels by Thomas Harris and in the films adapted from them.Lecter was introduced in the 1981 thriller novel Red Dragon as a brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer...
, impersonating a wounded guard, is taken away to an ambulance, one paramedic can be heard referring to the other as "Buzz."
Drive-In Reviews
Always a movie fan and occasional critic, he and noted artist Tony Fitzpatrick did a weekly radio segment on WLUP called Drive In Reviews in which they coined the phrase "quality kill." In October 1993 they took the show to television for a two-season run on Comedy CentralComedy Central
Comedy Central is an American cable television and satellite television channel that carries comedy programming, both original and syndicated....
, during which they featured particularly gruesome film clips from their favorite horror movies.
Personal life
Kilman is married and resides with his wife, Aimee, and daughter, Piper, in Chicago. He is also the proud caretaker of the internet sensation "Toby the Turtle" whose both love affair with Buzz, as well as subsequent ongoing illness (as a result of his eventual realization that Aimee was in fact, Buzz's wife, and not just a roommate, and which caused him to lose his joie de vivre and will to live) which has been been documented weekly through Buzz's call ins to the Steve Dahl Show Podcast.During 2007, Kilman suffered a kidney stone. He announced on-air that he had to leave in order to have it treated. He also obtained a hair transplant and endorsed the procedure in several advertisements.