Veteran New England Newsman Passes
by Brian Maloney, March 24th, 2008 at 02:39pm
Longtime radio and television newsman Bob Dyk has passed away aged 71, reports the Portland Press Herald:
Mr. Dyk, who had a background in radio and television, was an anchor and reporter for Channel 8 and News Radio WMTW from 1987 to 2004. He came out of retirement last year to work as a part-time anchor-reporter for WGAN and was working as recently as last month, his family said.
Among the highlights of his career was being the only American network correspondent on the scene in Tehran in 1979 for the first four days of the hostage crisis, when Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy in support of Iran’s revolution and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.
Mr. Dyk began his professional career as a page at CBS television in Los Angeles and transferred to CBS News as an editorial assistant during the network’s coverage of the 1960 Democratic convention, working with broadcast luminaries such as Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and Don Hewitt.
“There’s not enough fingers on your hands to know the number of people he worked with and who admired him,” said his brother, Jim Dyk.
He was inducted into the Army and served from 1960 to 1962, doing newscasts for Armed Forces Radio and TV Service in Hollywood. After his discharge, he worked at two radio stations before shifting to television. At KTLA, he and his colleagues won a Peabody award for their coverage of the Watts riots in 1965.
While vacationing in London in 1964-65, he reported on the death of Sir Winston Churchill.
In 1973, Mr. Dyk moved to London and freelanced for CBS Radio News. After five years, he rejoined ABC as a television correspondent.
He returned to the United States in 1984, and after working briefly with KGO-TV and KRBK-TV in his home state of California, he moved to Maine in 1987, and worked with Channel 8 and WMTW until his retirement.
Though I’ve never met Dyk, I had heard his WGAN news updates, where his professionalism came through loud and clear.
Veteran radio news reporters with a solid track record of experience both in broadcasting and life in general are tough to find these days. Even worse, many news-talk stations no longer appreciate the quality of their work, further damaging the format.
That’s one hell of a resume, particularly having been first in Tehran to cover the hostage crisis. That was history in the making.
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