Uploaded September 2015 | Updated September 2026, 3 hours ago
Reporter Bill Stout gets a little more than he bargained for while doing a live remote. (Honoring 68 years of broadcasting from KTLA-TV [Los Angeles]). On the air since January 22, 1947.
Info for Bill Stout:
From the Los Angeles Times, December 2, 1989:
____________________________________________________________________
Bill Stout, whose gravelly voice and acerbic manner proved both an endearing and enduring avenue of television news and commentary for nearly four decades, died Friday morning.
At his death, the balding, rumpled newscaster and former anchorman, who disdained the makeup and toupees often found in his trade, had been on Los Angeles television and radio for 39 years, nearly all of them on Channel 2.
His stern, paternal countenance also was known to millions outside this area. He was a card-carrying member of the Screen Actors Guild who had portrayed newscasters and reporters in several movies, including "Somewhere in Time," "House," "The Underground Man" and "The Phantom of Hollywood."
His awards ranged from Emmys to those from state and national press associations to Golden Mikes to a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And he expressed mixed enthusiasm for them all, fearing that the accolades that came his way might be seen by his audiences as more important than the honesty and credibility he sought to bring to his craft.
He said the high-salaried anchormen of television always appalled him as did the inexperienced but photogenic reporters whose stories often were used to boost ratings rather than provide information.
"On the other hand," he said, warming to a role he relished as television critic, "complicated stuff is difficult. Economics, government. We try with graphics, but newspapers are better."
He traced the era of chatty anchors and TV "happy talk" to the profit factor when station managers in the early 1960s discovered that they could make money through news programs.
William Stout was indeed one of those "guys" who were the Talking Heads of TV news in its infancy--before electronic innovations and videotape instantaneously brought the myriad corners of the world into the nation's living rooms.
He said he and his colleagues of yesterday had tried to rise above what Edward R. Murrow once defined as local news: "A curious mixture of show business, carnival huckstering and journalism."
"He was right, of course," Stout would say. "But what used to keep it reasonable--especially at the CBS stations--was the extra ingredient of responsibility. That's gone now," he said as early as 1975. "The worst thing anybody can say about a TV newsman these days is that he's 'traditional.' "
A former newspaperman, Stout wrote news before he ever broadcast it.
Born in Los Angeles and an English major at UCLA, Stout became a reporter at the Minneapolis Times in the late 1940s and a correspondent for the Associated Press.
He moved into broadcasting in 1950 as a radio reporter for KNX, the CBS radio station in Los Angeles, and joined Channel 2 in 1953, first as researcher, writer and reporter for the investigative series "Special Assignment."
After a few years at KTLA he joined the CBS network in 1963 as a Los Angeles correspondent and rejoined KCBS here in 1972 as a reporter and anchor.
He talked rather than preached to his audience as he wrote and then offered his "Perspective" on topics ranging from women's rights to defense spending to press freedom. He approached this most recent work as a wise but curmudgeonly friend talking to other friends about how things are and how they could be.
Reporter Bill Stout gets a little more than he bargained for while doing a live remote. (Honoring 68 years of broadcasting from KTLA-TV [Los Angeles]). On the air since January 22, 1947.
Info for Bill Stout:
From the Los Angeles Times, December 2, 1989:
____________________________________________________________________
Bill Stout, whose gravelly voice and acerbic manner proved both an endearing and enduring avenue of television news and commentary for nearly four decades, died Friday morning.
At his death, the balding, rumpled newscaster and former anchorman, who disdained the makeup and toupees often found in his trade, had been on Los Angeles television and radio for 39 years, nearly all of them on Channel 2.
His stern, paternal countenance also was known to millions outside this area. He was a card-carrying member of the Screen Actors Guild who had portrayed newscasters and reporters in several movies, including "Somewhere in Time," "House," "The Underground Man" and "The Phantom of Hollywood."
His awards ranged from Emmys to those from state and national press associations to Golden Mikes to a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And he expressed mixed enthusiasm for them all, fearing that the accolades that came his way might be seen by his audiences as more important than the honesty and credibility he sought to bring to his craft.
He said the high-salaried anchormen of television always appalled him as did the inexperienced but photogenic reporters whose stories often were used to boost ratings rather than provide information.
"On the other hand," he said, warming to a role he relished as television critic, "complicated stuff is difficult. Economics, government. We try with graphics, but newspapers are better."
He traced the era of chatty anchors and TV "happy talk" to the profit factor when station managers in the early 1960s discovered that they could make money through news programs.
William Stout was indeed one of those "guys" who were the Talking Heads of TV news in its infancy--before electronic innovations and videotape instantaneously brought the myriad corners of the world into the nation's living rooms.
He said he and his colleagues of yesterday had tried to rise above what Edward R. Murrow once defined as local news: "A curious mixture of show business, carnival huckstering and journalism."
"He was right, of course," Stout would say. "But what used to keep it reasonable--especially at the CBS stations--was the extra ingredient of responsibility. That's gone now," he said as early as 1975. "The worst thing anybody can say about a TV newsman these days is that he's 'traditional.' "
A former newspaperman, Stout wrote news before he ever broadcast it.
Born in Los Angeles and an English major at UCLA, Stout became a reporter at the Minneapolis Times in the late 1940s and a correspondent for the Associated Press.
He moved into broadcasting in 1950 as a radio reporter for KNX, the CBS radio station in Los Angeles, and joined Channel 2 in 1953, first as researcher, writer and reporter for the investigative series "Special Assignment."
After a few years at KTLA he joined the CBS network in 1963 as a Los Angeles correspondent and rejoined KCBS here in 1972 as a reporter and anchor.
He talked rather than preached to his audience as he wrote and then offered his "Perspective" on topics ranging from women's rights to defense spending to press freedom. He approached this most recent work as a wise but curmudgeonly friend talking to other friends about how things are and how they could be.
