R.I.P.: Dick Nourse, The Voice of Utah

Dick Nourse (1940-2023)

Dick Nourse, who delivered the news to generations of Utahns as the lead anchor at KSL-TV for 43 years, has died, according to the SLTribe.

Nourse’s death was reported by KSL on Thursday. He was 83. No cause of death was mentioned, though the station said Nourse was a three-time cancer survivor. He had retired in 2007, after appearing on his first newscast at KSL-Channel 5 in 1964.

Driving from Colorado in 1964 in “a brand-new ’63 Corvair,” he told co-anchor Bruce Lindsay during a 2007 retirement tribute on KSL, Nourse parked on Social Hall Avenue, where Salt Lake City’s three TV stations had their offices at the time.

Nourse first applied for a job at KUTV-Channel 2. He said they told him, “you’re a greenhorn. Come back in five years.” The next day, he went to what was then KCPX (now KTVX)-Channel 4, and got a similar response. A few days later, he went to KSL, which gave him an audition — and, a few days later, a job.

Within a year of his start at KSL, Nourse assembled a team — pinching weatherman Bob Welti and sportscaster Paul James from Channel 4 — to create one of the longest-running anchor teams in Utah broadcasting history, according to KSL.

Welti began his television career in 1948 at the pioneering KDYL-TV (now KTVX), Salt Lake City’s first TV station. KSL hired him and James away to work with Nourse in the 1960s, and the trio embodied KSL’s on-air personality for decades as the station rose to lead the market.

The trio worked together until 1991, when James and Welti both retired; from 1979 to 1991, Nourse was paired with a co-anchor, with Lindsay and Shelley Thomas alternating in the role.