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Tuesday, November 5, 2013

R.I.P.: Baltimore R/TV Personality Jim English

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, where he was also station manager of the university's radio station.

1 comment:

  1. 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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