R.I.P.: Floyd Brown, Longtime WGN Radio Personality

Floyd Brown (1930-2022)

Floyd Brown, the longtime Elgin resident who broke color barriers by being one of the first Blacks hired by a national radio network and best known for more than 28 years with WGN television and radio, died December 9, 2022.

He was 92, reports The Chicago Tribune.

Over the course of Brown’s 50-plus-years career, he worked as an engineer, program manager, newscaster, sportscaster and associate news editor and hosted several radio and television shows, including a jazz program, “The Floyd Brown Show” that aired on Sunday nights on WGN radio.

He started out in Texas, where he was born in 1930, and later moved with his family to Washington, D.C., according to his biography on WGN Radio’s website. He was studying accounting at Northwestern University in the 1940s when he realized his true calling was radio, the website says.

“He signed up for engineering and announcing classes (at the Radio Institute of America, which passed daily en route to his porter job at Chicago’s Drake Hotel) in order to pursue his dream and was hired in 1951 as an engineer at radio station WRMN in Elgin.

“When the usual announcer was late one day, Floyd stepped in and made his (on air) debut.”

He achieved national recognition in the mid-1960s when he was hired by NBC-owned WMAQ in Chicago, becoming the first Black to be hired by a major network. It was such an achievement that he was featured on the cover of NBC’s company magazine with Bill Cosby, who was then starring in the NBC television show “I Spy.”

He would work at WMAQ radio from 1965 to 1970 before moving to WGN radio and television, where he remained from 1971 until his retirement in 1999. He also had a show on WTTW-TV called “30 Good Minutes” in the 1980s.

Brown’s radio show was a fixture for more than two decades, and in addition to jazz, it featured a mix of current events and investment and business news. Over the years, he interviewed an array of jazz icons, including Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald and Lionel Hampton.

In 2016, he was inducted into the radio station’s Walk of Fame in 2016 and was a member of the Fox Valley Arts Hall of Fame.