Chuck Schaden – Class of June 1952
INDUCTED 2014
1970 – 2009 “Those Were The Days” old time radio show host/producer
1974 -2005 Nostalgia Digest editor/publisher
1982 The Cinnamon Bear Book, editor/publisher
1985 – 1995 “WBBM Old Time Radio Classics” host/producer
1988 WBBM Radio: Yesterday and Today, author
1993 Inducted into National Radio Hall of Fame
2003 Speaking of Radio, author
2006 – 2007 “When Radio Was” host/producer
Broadcaster/historian *CHUCK SCHADEN* was producer and host of the long-running “Those Were the Days”radio program for 39 years, from 1970 to 2009.
He has been nationally recognized for his efforts and was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1993, the only radio fan to receive this honor.
A former newspaper editor for the Press Community Newspaper group and marketing executive for North West Federal Savings, he turned his hobby into a vocation and drew from a collection of more than 50,000 vintage programs to prepare his broadcasts.
He was the founding editor and publisher of Nostalgia Digest (1974-2005). He edited and published The Cinnamon Bear Book, (1982) a nostalgic remembrance of the classic kids’ radio show. He is author of WBBM Radio: Yesterday and Today, (1988) a history of station WBBM, Chicago and is author of Speaking of Radio –Chuck Schaden’s conversations with the stars of the Golden Age of Radio, (2003) published by his Nostalgia Digest Press.
In 1974 he co-produced and co-starred with Jim Jordan, radio’s original Fibber McGee, in a seven-part series, Fibber McGee and the Good Old Days of Radio sponsored coast-to-coast by Chrysler Air Temp.
He was the host and producer of Old Time Radio Classics on WBBM Chicago for 10 years, 1985 to 1995. In 2006-07 he hosted the nationally syndicated old-time-radio series When Radio Was, replacing Stan Freberg.
A founding member of the Board of Directors of Chicago’s Museum of Broadcast Communications, he is a leading radio historian and frequent resource for public libraries, metropolitan daily and community
newspapers and colleges and universities throughout the country.
His has provided archival material to the Library of American Broadcasting at the University of Maryland and the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago.
Completing 39 years on the air, Chuck Schaden retired from broadcasting on June 27, 2009. During those years, he interviewed more than 200 performers, writers, producers, directors and sound effects people, all associated with the radio days.