NBC Announcer Retires After 62 Years
NEW YORK – Through the eras of John Chancellor, Tom Brokaw and now Brian Williams, Howard Reig’s voice also was heard when viewers heard they turned on the news.
“This is NBC Nightly News,” the clear baritone would say, ushering in headlines from Watergate to terrorism. Now 84, with a career that spans the very life of television itself, Reig retires Friday as NBC’s last staff announcer.
A gnomish figure who walks the halls of NBC’s Rockefeller Center office with the help of two hearing aids and a pacemaker, he’s been working for NBC and its parent General Electric for nearly 62 years.
His role as staff announcer is usually limited to those few key words each day. Sometimes he’d even pretape them.
Former “Nightly News” anchorman Tom Brokaw recalled Reig’s nightly opening having a settling effect.
“It would be chaos around here, with things happening all over the place and big news breaking, and I’d hear Howard’s voice and know it was time to settle down and go to work,” Brokaw said Thursday.
With all his announcing work through the years, Reig is proud to be identified with the “NBC Nightly News.”
“I’m a news addict,” he said. “I love being associated with the news. I think it is the most important part of our business √≥ unfortunately surrounded by a tremendous amount of garbage.”
His career began in 1943 when, as a high school English teacher, he took a summer acting job at the GE-owned radio station WGY in Schenectady, N.Y., and its new sister station WRGB-TV.
“They made me the first GE staff announcer √≥ and the last,” he said. (At one time NBC once had several announcers on staff, with duties that ranged from reading commercials to reading the news. Reig’s voice will continue to be heard on tape awhile.)
When he started, WRGB-TV didn’t have a regular schedule.
“The TV station went on the air whenever we pleased,” he said. “Somebody would get on the phone and call the 200 or 300 people who had sets and tell them to turn on their TVs.”
Some days he’d arrive at the radio station for his morning music program, then do newscasts until noon, a talk show in the afternoon, and an evening variety show on television.
He subsequently won a national announcing contest, which earned him a job with NBC in New York.
He almost didn’t last long. Reig was host of a classical music radio program that aired between midnight and 6 a.m. at WNBC. One night in 1952 he cued an hourlong symphony on the turntable and fell asleep. His engineer also dozed off; so did the person working the transmitter.
For seven minutes, listeners heard the sound of a needle scratching at the end of a record.
“I was sure I was going to get fired,” he said.
He was yelled at, but spared.
Not bad for a man born with a heart condition and told by his parents that he’d probably only live to about 10 or 12.
“I consider that I’ve lived a life of small miracles and some large,” he said.
He plans to move to Florida and live with one of his three sons, and dote on five grandchildren.
“You have to face facts,” he said. “When you’re 84 the end of the road is not that far away and I want to spend as much time as I can with my grandchildren.”
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