Gary Deeb, outspoken media columnist who spent many years in Chicago, dies at 79
Gary Deeb, an award-winning media columnist who spent many years in Chicago and was known for his outspoken and sometimes scathing commentary on the TV industry, has died.
Deeb died Saturday, May 17, in Charlotte, North Carolina — where he had most recently lived. He was 79 years old.
Born Oct. 23, 1945, in Buffalo, New York, Deeb worked for several local radio stations in Buffalo as a teenager and attended the University of Buffalo, according to The Buffalo News. In 1970, he became a radio and TV critic for that newspaper.
In 1973, Deeb came to Chicago and joined the Chicago Tribune in the same role. By 1975, the then-30-year-old critic was nationally syndicated — and was profiled in Time Magazine as the "Terror of the Tube."
In a Dec. 1, 1975, profile, Time Magazine called Deeb "the sourest, crudest ravager of the medium since [Nixon Vice President] Spiro Agnew put away his thesaurus." The profile noted that Deeb had dismissed that year's prime time TV season as "'devoid of innovation, creativity or diversification,' freighted with 'drivel,' 'sanitized doggerel' and 'phony, rotten garbage.'"
Time also credited Deeb as one of a few radio and television critics in American newspapers who did more than rewrite news releases.
"Indifferent to the metaphysics of TV as a medium, Deeb tore into the venality that stamped it as a business," the late Michael Miner wrote in the Chicago Reader in 2003.
Some of Deeb's comments on primetime TV series in the 70s are preserved on Rotten Tomatoes.
Deeb proclaimed the David Carradine action-adventure series "Kung Fu" to be "a violent TV show that insidiously exploits the mass audience's craving for blood and guts, and yet astonishingly wraps it all up in a pretty package topped by a stylish ribbon that proclaims the Golden Rule."
He called "Little House on the Prairie" starring Michael Landon and Karen Grassle "a soupbone — a meatless sausage of cloying sweetness, padded dialog, and soap-opera background music."
But Deeb wrote that "'The Jeffersons' comes on with smooth professionalism and an unmistakable aura of self-confidence. It's as if the show were an old veteran instead of a rank beginner," and characterized the sitcom "Taxi" as "a touching portrait of a tiny slice of life's underside."
Deeb also covered and criticized local radio and television and the Chicago news business. Specifically regarding CBS Chicago, Deeb was behind a 1976 letter-writing campaign launched when Channel 2 removed beloved weatherman John Coughlin from evening newscasts and brought on a new weatherman, Tom Alderman, to take his place. After more than 10,000 letters came in, Coughlin was restored as CBS Chicago's chief weatherman in February 1977, published reports noted.
In 1980, Deeb switched to the Chicago Sun-Times, where the renowned media columnist Robert Feder worked with him as a legman.
While working as a newspaper columnist, Deeb also appeared daily on Fred Winston's WLS-AM radio show, Buffalo Broadcasting noted.
In covering and critiquing Chicago TV news, Deeb was especially hard on ABC 7 — and the congenial and sometimes comedic chemistry between that station's anchors Fahey Flynn and Joel Daly and weatherman John Coleman. But in 1983, Deeb moved to television and joined ABC 7, where he spent the next 13 years covering radio, television, and print media on that station's newscasts.
Deeb moved on from Chicago in 1996 — returning to Buffalo and later moving to Charlotte, where The Buffalo News said he lived for nearly 20 years.
Deeb was a nine-time Pulitzer nominee and an Emmy Award winner with Channel 7. He was also a member of the U.S. Army Reserve.
A memorial service will be held at a future date, according to his obituary.
