Bill Kurtis signs off as scorekeeper and judge on NPR's "Wait Wait… Don't Tell Me!"
Stephen Colbert was not the only icon associated with CBS to sign off in recent days.
In an episode that aired Saturday morning, former CBS Chicago anchorman Bill Kurtis signed off from his role as the judge and scorekeeper on the NPR weekly news quiz show "Wait Wait… Don't Tell Me!" alongside host Peter Sagal.
Brandi Carlile appeared on the program as a special guest, and Luke Burbank, Negin Farsad, and Paula Poundstone served as panelists.
Before the quiz show began, Sagal went back in time to 2014, when someone suggested that "Wait Wait" bring on Kurtis to succeed the program's original judge and scorekeeper, late NPR news anchor Carl Kasell.
"I said, 'Are you nuts? Why would Bill Kurtis, groundbreaking journalist and giant of broadcasting, squander his hard-earned reputation doing our silly little show every week?'" Sagal said on the quiz show. "Well today, either Bill is stepping down after being the hilarious basso profundo soul of our show for 12 wonderful years, or he finally came to his senses."
Sagal added at the end of the show that Kurtis has traveled all around the country with "Wait Wait," and said "the most ridiculous things in that most serious of voices, and he has often said how lucky he feels to have done all that with us.
"But Bill, for once, you're wrong," Sagal continued. "We are the lucky ones."
The audience for the Thursday evening taping at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago's Fine Arts Building erupted in cheers for Kurtis — whom generations of Chicagoans remember best as an anchorman with CBS News Chicago, or as we would have said back then, Channel 2 News.
Kurtis first arrived in Chicago in 1966, after receiving a call from CBS Chicago following his coverage of a tornado on Topeka, Kansas, TV station WIBW. He worked as a street reporter and later took on anchoring duties and documentaries at Channel 2.
In his early years with the station, Kurtis covered the riots in Chicago following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, and the unrest surrounding the Democratic National Convention in Chicago later that same year.
In 1970, Kurtis joined CBS News on the national level as a West Coast correspondent.
In 1973, management lured Kurtis back to CBS Chicago as principal anchor, working alongside commentator and anchorman Walter Jacobson. The team turned the Channel 2 News into a powerhouse in Chicago, with Kurtis traveling the country and the world in search of Chicago angles on national and international stories for his acclaimed "Focus" reports.
Kurtis served another stint at CBS News national from 1982 to 1985, working in New York as co-anchor of the CBS Morning News — now known as CBS Mornings. He returned to CBS Chicago in 1985 and spent another 11 years on the anchor desk, fronting the 10 p.m. news alongside Jacobson and later Linda MacLennan, before departing CBS in 1996.
In 2009, Kurtis returned to CBS Chicago once more, for what became an encore run anchoring with Jacobson at 6 p.m. The pair retired from CBS Chicago in 2013.
Kurtis' memoir, "Whirlwind: My Life Reporting the News," was released in September 2025.