Tedd O'Connell, 69, Longtime Madison, WI television anchor
ZapRatz
The Capital Times — 8/04/2008 4:42 pm
http://www.madison.com/tct/news/stories/299244
Longtime Madison television anchor Tedd O'Connell died Monday at his
home in Green Bay.
O'Connell, 69, died just before noon. He was diagnosed with cancer in
June.
He served as a reporter and anchor at WISC-TV in Madison from 1974 to
1989 and has had several other television jobs since then in Montana,
North Carolina and Iowa. He also worked for a time as a government
spokesman in Naples, Fla.
During his 15 years in Madison, O'Connell was known as a hardworking
reporter who even after becoming the anchor at Channel 3 continued to
run his beat in the City County Building.
Always ready with a witty remark, O'Connell told jokes about himself
as well as others, and loved telling the story of his 1975 trip to
Cuba to cover Mayor Paul Soglin's journey there.
It was during that trip when he got to interview Fidel Castro, only to
discover there was no film in the camera. It was not his fault,
although he let people assume it was, for the added humor.
O'Connell is survived by his longtime wife, Roseanne.
- - -
Phil Ball remembers the late Madison broadcaster Tedd O'Connell
on Wednesday 08/06/2008 3:23 pm
http://www.thedailypage.com/daily/article.php?article=23415
http://www.thedailypage.com/media/2008/08/06/586oconnell.jpg
Editor's note: Phil Ball, the legendary political activist who dropped
from sight years ago, reappeared the other day with these photos and
reminiscence of the late WISC news anchor Tedd O'Connell, who ruled
the Madison airwaves from 1974 to 1989. Ball was an aide to Mayor Paul
Soglin when Hizzoner decamped to Havana in 1975 with an entourage that
included O'Connell. Here is Ball's recollection.
Recently deceased Comrade Tedd O'Connell was a revolutionary when the
revolution was fueled by drugs, sex and rock n roll. His sphere of
operations stretched from Mr. P's on Madison's southside to
Hemingway's Bodega del Media in Havana.
O'Connell is pictured here in Cuba with child mayor Paul Soglin and
me, one of Soglin's thousands of paid staffers, as we listened
intently to El Jefe's annual call to arms. Ted(d, who knows why the
second D?) was mistakenly blamed for botching the filming of Fidel
Castro's unexpected conversation with Soglin in a Havana hotel.
Far more likely was that some hack anti-Castro C.I.A. loser stripped
the film from the Channel 3 camera after the fact and sold it to the
C.I.A. in exchange for a letter of commendation from President Nixon.
Ted(d; really, now, what's the point of that second D?) never guessed.
The better stories about TED, well, that's for another day.
- - -
FROM THE ARCHIVES
Tedd O'Connell: Out with a Bang
Fred Milverstedt on Wednesday 08/06/2008 3:14 pm
http://www.thedailypage.com/daily/article.php?article=23413
Longtime Madison television anchor Tedd O'Connell died Monday at his
home in Green Bay. The following story, appearing in the "Mixed
Signals" department, was printed in the February 3, 1989, issue of
Isthmus.
Tedd O'Connell was a public servant for about three hours last week
when one reporter's phone call helped convince him he was in the wrong
line of work.
It was Joe Beck of the State Journal, asking tough and embarrassing
questions about things in his past.
There was this drunken-driving conviction from 11 years ago -- that,
and Tedd's reputation as a wild and crazy party guy who loved a good
time. That sort of thing might be okay for a TV newsman, went the
general drift, but how was he going to justify it in his new job as
the Thompson administration's coordinator of the Alliance for a
Drug-Free Wisconsin? Had he told the governor before he was appointed,
and if so, what did the governor think?
Seldom at a loss for snappy comebacks, O'Connell was taken aback.
"I had this feeling of impotence," he says. "I've done enough
interviews myself to know which way they're headed by the ways the
questions are asked. I wanted to be succinct in my answers, maybe even
clever, but as soon as I heard that accusatory tone, an alarm bell
went off in my head.
"I thought, 'Uh-oh-if they want to make a deal out of this, then what
will come next?' I began to have very serious reservations about
putting myself and family through that kind of scrutiny."
Three hours later, submitting a letter to the governor, O'Connell
resigned the post. He felt embarrassed -- as though it were one hell
of a way to cap off an otherwise distinguished career as a television
newsman. But he took has lumps with dignity and tendered no real
complaints about how the system works.
"I was very naïve," he says. "For a guy who's been around as much as I
have, to think that possibly my '70s personality did not fit my '90s
position never really entered my mind.
"You can be public -- sort of public -- as Tedd O'Connell, the
well-known anchor person, but the minute you step into the public
arena and become a 'servant of the state,' you're open to anything,
certainly to press and public scrutiny. The rules change fast."
Now, as he originally intended before Tommy Thompson came along
unexpectedly with his $42,000 "drug czar" position a few weeks ago,
Teddy Ball Game -- "ol' Double-D" -- will conclude his career at WISC
in a few days, then ride off into the sunset with his wife, Rosanne,
"to escape the public eye" and find "a little adventure in life." It
may be to Arizona, or possibly Florida, whichever way they point their
car first. But wherever it is, he won't go out slinking, tail between
his legs.
"For a while," he says, "I thought to myself, 'What a horrible way to
go out instead of going out nicely-boy, did I screw up.' But then I
thought no, maybe not. Sure, I may be remembered as 'the guy who blew
the state job,' but I really don't think so. I would prefer to think
my colleagues will say, 'He raised the level of TV journalism in this
market a little bit.'
"I think I did, and in the long run, I suppose that's all that
counts."
O'Connell sees a pressing need for a revitalized media effort to get
down to the truth of matters by digging in harder and cutting through
the dreck. He feels this has not been the trend-especially in
television.
"I'm a little less familiar with the newspaper writers -- I've seen
some who are good and some who are bad-but as far as TV journalists
go, there are very few good ones around. TV does well in covering spot
news immediately-election results, the tornado in Barneveld, the
carnage at city hall last year when Clyde Chamberlain was shot -- but
what we haven't done well is bring the viewers the kind of exhaustive,
investigative, tedious background information that informs them why an
issue is important.
"Sixty-eight percent of Americans rely on TV for most of their news,"
O'Connell says, "and what that tells me is we're not well informed. It
borders on ignorance. If people don't read their newspapers to augment
their television, we're in real trouble as a society."
The main problem with TV, he says, is that stations are far more
concerned with the "appearance" of a show rather than content, often
taking their marching orders from numbers-conscious researchers who
reside out of state.
"The bottom line should be whether or not they covered the important
events of the day and informed and illuminated without too much
subjectivity," he says. "But as it stands now, the idea that TV news
actually reflects what's really happening in the community is
absolutely preposterous."
If TV news does want to improve, O'Connell says, stations need to
expand in both time allotted for coverage and competent staff. "But
frankly," he says, "I don't see it coming."
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