WLS-Ch. 7 sports director and anchor Jim Rose announced on Monday’s 5 p.m. newscast that he plans to retire next month after 41 years at the station.
A Rhode Island native, Rose, 70, is the sports director and anchor for ABC 7′s 5, 6 and 10 p.m. newscasts. He joined ABC 7 in 1982 from a station in Syracuse, New York. In 2021, he was named ABC 7′s 10 p.m. sports anchor after the station fired longtime lead sports anchor Mark Giangreco.
With his most recent three-year contract with the station set to expire in September, Rose told the Tribune that he had been talking with the station’s management for the past few weeks.
“They were just wonderful with the whole aspect of it, and I will tell you this: the quote I like to use is, nobody beats Father Time,” Rose said. “Now that said, I turned 70 in July and I’m in excellent health. I get a health checkup every six months just because I want to, and my health is, as pilots say, right on the glide path and glide center. But this seemed like the perfect time to call it a career. I have had more of a career than a man is really entitled to.”
Rose noted that he has the longest-running tenure of any sports anchor at any station in the nation’s top 20 markets, although he noted that Los Angeles sports anchor Jim Hill first joined his current station, KCBS-TV, in 1979 but left for five years in the late 1980s and early 1990s to join KABC-TV.
In 2013 Rose was inducted into the Silver Circle of the Chicago/Midwest chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He also has anchored the station’s annual broadcast of the Bud Billiken Parade, and co-hosted ABC 7′s specials from the Chicago Auto Show.
Rose said he has been proud of how he conducted himself in his career in Chicago, and while he praised how his station has handled its approach, he said he has been disappointed by the national shift in invective when it comes to sports.
“There’s so much more confrontation, not at our station — Channel 7 is still an ethical and character-filled television station — but (on) sports talk radio, they yell and scream and do all of this stuff, and I was never one to ever do something to try to get ratings,” he said. “I’ve tried to operate in a respectful, character-filled manner. I leave Channel 7 with my word, my pride, my dignity and my name intact. That to me is so very important.”
Rose said he and his wife, Lakesha, plan to stay in Chicago.
“I love Chicago,” he said. “We originally were going to retire to Saugatuck, Michigan, but my wife’s interior design business took off during the pandemic, and when my wife’s business took off, I couldn’t stand in the way of her career. I’m in full support of her career.”
ABC 7 management has not named a replacement for Rose.
Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.