R.I.P.: The Baritone Voice Of Don Pardo Has Been Silenced

Don Pardo, the magisterial announcer of Saturday Night Live for nearly 40 years — the highlight of seven heard and hardly seen decades at NBC — has died.

Don Pardo

He was 96.

Pardo died Monday evening, an NBC spokesperson confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter. He died in his sleep.

He broke his hip in March 2013, causing him to miss two episodes of the SNL season, but he was back introducing the cast starting in September.

Although Pardo retired from NBC in 2004, he continued with SNL through the end of last season in May, with his introductions in later years recorded from his Arizona home.

In 2010, the booming baritone became the first announcer to be inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in recognition of a lifetime in broadcasting that included work on game shows including the original versions of The Price Is Right and Jeopardy, soap operas and news programs.



As the NBC staff announcer on Nov. 22, 1963, he was among the first to tell the nation about the assassination attempt on President John F. Kennedy. At 1:45 p.m. Eastern time, Pardo, speaking over an NBC Television Station title card, broke into a rerun of Bachelor Father and said in his 22-second report: "President Kennedy was shot today just as his motorcade left downtown Dallas. Mrs. Kennedy jumped up and grabbed Mr. Kennedy. She cried, ‘Oh, no.' "

"When I read the bulletin, I thought I sounded pretty good, considering," Pardo once said. "But in retrospect, I don’t know how I did it."

Pardo was a 31-year NBC veteran when Lorne Michaels hired him as the announcer for SNL, which debuted on Sept. 11, 1975. Working out of a hallway and later a recording booth inside Studio 8H at Rockefeller Center, he each week intoned, “It’s Saturday Night Live!” before introducing the castmembers, guest host and musical guest — a signature part of the show.

"He was very much an 'announcer‚' " Michaels said. “That’s what I wanted, that authority voice.”

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Pardo was hired for his first radio position at WJAR in Providence in 1938.

He joined NBC as an in-house announcer in 1944, remaining on the network staff for 60 years. Among the radio programs he worked on as an announcer were Barrie Craig, Confidential Investigator, the sci-fi shows X Minus One and Dimension X among others.

During World War II, Pardo worked as a war reporter for NBC Radio.