Jim Hartz, a co-host of NBC’s “Right this moment” present for 2 years within the mid-Seventies who additionally was a neighborhood information anchor in New York and Washington, died April 17 at a hospital in Fairfax County. He was 82.
Washington
Jim Hartz, ‘Today’ show host and Channel 4 anchor, dies at 82
An old-school newscaster with a deep voice that had hints of his native Oklahoma, Mr. Hartz turned one of many nation’s youngest native information anchors when he joined New York’s WNBC-TV in 1964, when he was 24.
In New York, Mr. Hartz helped make WNBC’s 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. applications the top-rated newscasts within the metropolis. Broadcasting from the identical constructing that housed the nationwide headquarters of NBC Information, he made a reputation as a reliable information reader and on-the-scene reporter and drew the discover of community executives.
Along with native information, Mr. Hartz lined nationwide politics, went overseas to report on the 1973 Arab-Israeli Warfare and have become particularly identified for his reporting on science and the area program. From 1966 to 1976, he helped anchor NBC’s area protection, together with the Apollo launches that took the primary astronauts to the moon.
His mentor at NBC Information was Frank McGee, a veteran reporter and fellow Oklahoman who was host of the “Right this moment” present from 1971 till his demise from bone most cancers in 1974. When Mr. Hartz was chosen to succeed McGee as co-host of “Right this moment” alongside Barbara Walters, he reportedly beat out Tom Brokaw and Tom Snyder for the job.
He dealt with a mixture of onerous information and leisure tales, usually sharing the display screen with NBC mainstays Joe Garagiola and Gene Shalit, this system’s longtime film critic. Mr. Hartz as soon as had a testy interview with former vice chairman Spiro Agnew, who complained concerning the information media being “sympathetic to the Zionist trigger” in protection of Israel.
Mr. Hartz usually mentioned his favourite project on “Right this moment” was a collection of visits to all 50 states within the months main as much as the 1976 U.S. bicentennial.
“It’s a kind of stuff you don’t neglect,” he mentioned in 2012. “It was an opportunity to see the nation nearly like a snapshot.”
In June 1976, Walters left the “Right this moment” present, and as NBC executives reconfigured this system, Mr. Hartz was quickly changed as host by Brokaw. He stayed on for a number of months in a diminished position as a roving correspondent.
“The present was glamorous on the skin, however inside it’s one of many hardest jobs there’s,” Mr. Hartz advised the Tulsa World in 2001. “It turned my life inside out.”
In 1977, he got here to Washington as co-anchor with Jim Vance of the 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts on the NBC-owned WRC-TV (Channel 4). He was reportedly paid $200,000 a yr, the best wage of any native newscaster on the time.
After two years, WRC-TV introduced in Gordon Peterson from competing station Channel 9 (then often called WDVM), and Mr. Hartz’s contract was not renewed.
He later turned co-host, with Broadway star Mary Martin, of “Over Straightforward,” a PBS program about ageing gracefully that originated in San Francisco and featured interviews with celebrities corresponding to comic Bob Hope and actress Jane Fonda. Within the Eighties and Nineties, Mr. Hartz had an extended tenure as host of the PBS science program “Innovation” and labored on different exhibits, together with a joint PBS telecast with a Japanese community about Asian information.
Within the late Nineties, Mr. Hartz served as a visiting scholar on the First Modification Middle at Vanderbilt College in Nashville. He turned notably enthusiastic about how one can enhance the scientific literacy of most people.
He collaborated with NASA scientist Rick Chappell on a ebook, “Worlds Aside,” that aimed to bridge the gulf between scientists and journalists. The writers maintained that misunderstandings on either side threatened the scientific preeminence of the US.
“Moreover scientists who don’t converse English and journalists who don’t converse science,” Mr. Hartz and Chappell wrote, “there are unsure gatekeepers — editors who determine which tales shall be printed or produced — and a public ill-equipped to understand the nuance and significance of scientific developments. Given these circumstances, it’s not stunning that the favored assist that science as soon as loved is now eroding.”
James LeRoy Hartz was born Feb. 3, 1940, in Tulsa. His father was an Meeting of God pastor, and his mom was a homemaker.
He took premedicine programs on the College of Tulsa and, to assist pay his tuition, started working in radio. He was an announcer at two radio stations earlier than leaving faculty to change into a tv reporter for KOTV, the Tulsa CBS affiliate. An NBC producer seen him on the air and employed him for the community’s station in New York.
“When NBC recruited me from information director at KOTV three a long time in the past, I moved to New York,” he mentioned in 1994. ″The world turned my information beat: fight within the Center East, area pictures, presidential journeys.”
His marriage to Norma Tandy led to divorce. Survivors embody his spouse of 42 years, the previous Alexandra Dickson of Alexandria, Va.; two daughters from his first marriage, Jana Hartz Maher of Colorado Springs, and Nancy Hartz Cole of Reston, Va.; six grandchildren; and 6 great-grandchildren. A son from his first marriage, John M. Hartz, died in 2015.
Along with broadcasting, Mr. Hartz had a public relations consulting enterprise and contributed articles to Nationwide Geographic and different publications. He gained 5 Emmy Awards all through his profession and retired in his mid-60s.
He mentioned the 2 most necessary qualities wanted in a TV journalist had been a capability to make ad-lib feedback for lengthy intervals and “a robust bladder.”