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| Jim English 1969 |
Veteran Baltimore
radio and television broadcaster, and broadcasting teacher Jim English died
Sunday.
He was 79, according to a posting on the WBAL website.
English had worked as a disc jockey, news reporter,
announcer and weatherman on radio and television, in a career that spanned from
the 1950's through the 80's.
The Shamokin, Pennsylvania
native started his career in Harrisburg , where
he worked for ten years, first as a jazz disc jockey, then as a news reporter
finally serving as the "Atlantic Weatherman" on WHP-TV, the CBS
affiliate in Harrisburg .
While in Harrisburg ,
he also hosted "The Bear's Den," a radio postgame show for the
Hershey Bears hockey team.
English came to Baltimore
in 1966, to take a job as a weatherman at WBAL-TV. He held that job for three
years, then he became a staff announcer at the station, reading live station
ID's, commercials and news bulletins during the broadcast day.
After the station eliminated the live announcer positions in
1973, English worked at a number of radio stations in Baltimore and briefly served as the weekend
weatherman at WJZ-TV.
He later hosted Maryland Public Television's Aviation
Weather.
From 1980 until 1995, English taught broadcasting at Towson University
This just-graduated kid from William Penn HS had a summer job at the Harrisburg CBS station, WHP-TV, the summer of 1964. I’d operate one of the cameras on the evening and late news, and between the two half-hour programs, with nothing to do, would go downstairs to the station’s FM radio studio, where an older, somewhat handicapped, erudite Jim English played jazz in the evening hours. Jim let me look through the thousands of albums on his studio’s shelves, even to take some home for a night, and was always accepting of my ignorance of good music (and much else). Wish I'd tried to contact him in recent years to thank him for his generosity. RIP, Jim.
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