WGN News at Nine Weekend anchors Robert Jordan and Jackie Bange have been anchoring together for over 20 years. Since the early 2000s, they’ve had a bit of a crazy tradition…
Every time they cut for commercial break, the pair will do a highly elaborate handshake. It’s something they started as a way of combating the negativity of reporting tragic news stories.
It’s adorable…and genius.
(Source: WGN News)
When asked how it all started, the pair had this to say:
“We kind of fight over how it started, but in my mind, it started when we used the new intros and we had never seen our faces in the anchor introductions,” Bange said. “When they first had our photos, we looked and we raised our arms and did a little cheer and added on to it.”
Here’s what Jordan had to say about how the handshake started: “Jackie and I would read through the first segment of news, which was filled with death and destruction, and at the end we would just shake our heads and say ‘This is terrible.'”
So to lighten the mood, Jordan said, they started doing funny moves. The first one? The “Three Stooges” eye poke, Jordan said. “Then, we started adding moves, and many of them were related to items that were in the news,” Jordan said. The “shotgun move,” for example, represents the story about when former Vice President Dick Cheney shot his hunting companion, Jordan said.
– WGN
