The brother of the news anchor who shocked viewers by killing herself on live TV has broken his silence, saying that he’s thought about her “public suicide” every day since it happened in 1975.
On the morning on July 15, 1974, on-air personality Christine Chubbuck was sitting behind the news desk for her daily live show, Suncoast Digest, where she discussed community affairs with her audience of about 500 people in south-central Florida.r
“It was her show,” Chubbuck’s brother Greg told People. “It was one person doing all of it with very low pay.”
According to a 1975 article published in the Washington Post, the 29-year-old made about $5,000 per year for hosting the 30-minute morning show that started broadcasting on ABC affiliate WXLT-TV in 1972.
The final episode
At the anchor desk of Sarasota’s Channel 40, Chubbuck calmly delivered three standard news stories before attempting to introduce a pre-recorded segment on a local shooting from the night before.
When the video failed to roll due to a technical glitch, she flicked her dark hair, looked directly into the camera and, with composure, said something that would shock viewers and make media history: “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.”
In that chilling moment, Chubbuck reached for the brown bag she had earlier placed beneath the desk, pulled out a revolver, and tragically shot herself on live television.
She then collapsed on the desk and the broadcast faded to black, bringing the horrifying moment to an abrupt end.
“I went flying out to the studio thinking it was a very uncouth joke, and I was going to give her a mouthful,” said the show’s technical director Linford Rickard.
Instead, he saw the blood pouring from her head onto the studio floor.
Chubbuck was rushed to the hospital and died 15 hours later.
Last words
While the Ohio native didn’t leave a suicide note, she left behind her script – stained by her blood on the news desk – to be read after the shooting.
Written in third person, it described a TV personality who, after shooting herself in a live broadcast, was in “critical condition” at the Sarasota Memorial Hospital.
Her last words, “an attempted suicide,” at first confused people but as her co-workers explained, Chubbuck “was too good to write’ a suicide’ when it might have failed.”
And her mother told the Washington Post that “Chris was hedging her bets.”
Depression
“It was the most unexpected thing in the world,” former WXLT chief engineer Dan Lunin told People. “None of us had any idea there was any real problem there. What was in her heart or mind we will never know.”
Meanwhile, Greg explained that his sister, who had shown signs of depression since she was only 10, had a lot of sadness in her heart: “Nothing brought her joy in a way being good at something brings joy to most people,” he said in a 2016 interview with the Sun.
Looking back, he now believes Chubbuck may have been bipolar – though in 1974, that diagnosis simply wasn’t on the radar.
The now-retired relative reflected, “Christine would do things to a high level of ability then stop and do something else which, again, was one of the early signs she was bipolar.”
At the time, however, the TV host was only diagnosed with “general depression,” and the treatments available back then may have only worsened her condition, leading to her death.
‘Nothing glorious about suicide’
“Public suicide is another level beyond suicide. It’s an anger and rage that I can’t understand, and I’ve thought about it every day,” Greg said of Chubbuck’s shocking on-air death that made national headlines.
Decades later, her suicide echoed through pop culture, even helping to inspire the 1976 Oscar-winning film Network, starring Faye Dunaway and Peter Finch.
Then in 2016, Chubbuck’s haunting story resurfaced with renewed interest on the big screen where two powerful films revisited her final days.
Christine offers a dramatic, emotionally charged look at the ambitious reporter’s unraveling, while Kate Plays Christine takes a more experimental approach – a meta-style documentary that follows an actress preparing to portray the news host, blurring the lines between performance and reality.
“I just wish the people who were interested in Christine were interested in who she really was or helping people who find themselves in the same circumstance,” Greg shared with the Sun. “I choose not to see either of the two movies…There’s nothing glorious about suicide, or what it does to the people who loved the person.”
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