The beat goes on for Chicago radio’s golden sage

Clark Weber

After almost seven years and 1,404 broadcasts, Chicago radio legend Clark Weber is pulling the plug on A Senior Moment. But that doesn’t mean he's stepping away from his audience.

The one-minute daily radio feature, which Weber started writing and producing for Sound Targeting in 2005, expanded to 34 stations and online streaming. Billed as “golden advice from the golden years,” the essays served up Weber’s wisdom, insight and humor on a wide range of life’s experiences. (This week’s topics run the gamut from “beautiful cars and beautiful women” to “government regulated industries.”)

“Although I really enjoyed doing the show, I decided to hang it up,” Weber told me. But he’s already in talks with Salem Communications about bringing it back in some form on news/talk WIND-AM (560), where he worked under previous ownership in the ’70s and ’80s.

As I wrote at the time he launched A Senior Moment: “In addition to his undeniable talent and his warm, engaging voice, Clark Weber has always been blessed with an impeccable sense of timing. Since 1961, when he first signed on here as a top-rated rock and roll disc jockey, Weber has always known precisely when to segue with his audience from one format to another, and how to make each transition with effortless grace.” That’s still true today.

I can’t think of anyone who’s had a more enviable career over the past 50 years, from his start as one of the seminal figures in the creation of WLS-AM (890) as a 50,000-watt powerhouse rocker through his various incarnations as a first-rate talk show host, broadcast marketing executive, advocate for the economic clout of seniors, and industry elder statesman. All done with style, class and professionalism.

Still amazingly sharp at 81, Weber stays active serving clients of his advertising agency and maintaining a busy schedule of public speaking engagements. He’s been especially in demand since he wrote Clark Weber’s Rock and Roll Radio, his splendid memoir of the golden age of Top 40 radio in Chicago, published by Chicago's Books Press.

“Retirement communities both here in Florida and in the Chicago area are booking me to tell the rock and roll stories of my book and combining it with how I made the move to a retirement community [Westminster Place Presbyterian community in Evanston],” he said from his winter home, where he currently has three appearances lined up. “So the beat goes on.”