Stan Chambers
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Stanley "Stan" Chambers is a veteran newsman who has been working for television station KTLA in Los Angeles since 1947. In a major market like Los Angeles, where new personalities come and go almost as quickly as one changes a channel, such longevity is no small accomplishment. In six decades of reporting the news for KTLA, Chambers covered almost every major news in Los Angeles, including earthquakes, fires, floods, human tragedies, riots and assassinations. Born in Los Angeles, he attended Loyola Marymount University and transferred to the University of Southern California where he majored in history and minored in international relations. He got his start in broadcasting at the campus radio station.
Chambers' reporting career started in December 1947, shortly after KTLA became the first commercially-licensed TV station in the western United States. There were about 300 television sets in the L.A. area, and only half of them worked. Chambers remembers, "In the early days, the station kept a list of everyone who owned a TV set and we got regular reports from them on their reactions to programming and the quality of their TV reception. Most of the TV sets then were RCA or Dumont, but quite few of them were home made, put together on the order of ham radios, with coat hanger antennas."
Chambers spent his first few months at KTLA as a stage hand, but was quickly promoted to operations, then sales and at the same time, began reporting and working on live variety shows. "In those days, everyone did every little thing", Chambers recalls.
Since becoming a reporter, Chambers has covered over 22,000 news stories. His April 1949 live on the scene 27½ hour report covering the unsuccessful attempted rescue of Kathy Fiscus from an abandoned well in San Marino, California is considered to have established an early benchmark for modern day television spot news coverage. In 1952 Chambers was involved in the first live telecast of an atomic bomb test at the Nevada Test Site. He has covered several disasters during his career including the 1961 Bel Air-Brentwood fires, the 1963 Baldwin Hills Reservoir dam break, the 1971 Sylmar and 1994 Northridge Earthquakes. He has also covered many high profile stories such as the 1963 kidnapping of Frank Sinatra, Jr., the 1965 Watts Riots, the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, the 1969 Tate-LaBianca murders by the Manson Family, and the late 1970s Hillside Strangler case. Chambers broke the story on the 1991 beating of Rodney King by officers from the Los Angeles Police Department.
Stan Chambers has earned several Emmy Awards, Golden Mike Awards, LA City and County Proclamations, an LA Press Club Award, and a "star" on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Hired as a desk assistant in 2001, Jamie Chambers followed his grandfather Stan's tradition as a full-time reporter at KTLA starting in 2003.
