Christine "Chris" Chubbuck (August 24, 1944 – July 15, 1974) was an American television news reporter who worked for stations WTOG and WXLT-TV in Sarasota, Florida. She was the first person to commit suicide on a live television broadcast. Early life Christine Chubbuck was born in Hudson, Ohio, the daughter of Margaretha D. "Peg" (1921–1994) and George Fairbanks Chubbuck (1918–2015). She had two brothers, Greg and Tim. Chubbuck attended the Laurel School for Girls in Shaker Heights, a suburb of Cleveland. During her years at Laurel, she jokingly formed a "Dateless Wonder Club" with other "rejected" girls who did not have dates on Saturday nights. Chubbuck attended Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, for one year, majoring in theater arts, then attended Endicott College in Beverly, Massachusetts, before earning a degree in broadcasting at Boston University in 1965. Career Early work Chubbuck worked for WVIZ in Cleveland between 1966 and 1967, and attended a summer workshop in radio and television at New York University in 1967. That same year, she worked in Canton, Ohio, and, for three months, at WQED-TV in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as an assistant producer for two local shows, Women's World and Keys to the City. In 1968, Chubbuck left WQED to spend four years as a hospital computer operator and two years with a cable television firm in Sarasota, Florida. Immediately before joining ABC affiliate WXLT-TV (now WWSB), she worked in the traffic department of WTOG in St. Petersburg. Several years before her death, Chubbuck had moved into her family's summer cottage on Siesta Key. Sally Quinn of The Washington Post later reported that she had painted the bedroom and canopied bed to look like that of a young teenager. After Chubbuck's parents were divorced, her mother Peg and younger brother Greg came to live in the Florida home. When Greg left, her elder brother Tim moved in. Chubbuck had a close relationship with her family, describing her mother and Greg as her closest friends. WXLT-TV WXLT's owner, Bob Nelson, hired Chubbuck as a reporter, but later gave her a community affairs talk show, Suncoast Digest, which ran at 9:00am. Production Manager Gordon J. Acker described Chubbuck's new show to a local paper: "It will feature local people and local activities. It will give attention, for instance, to the storefront organizations that are concerned with alcoholics, drug users, and other 'lost' segments of the community." Page five of