One has to have been a resident of the, cough, dee-emm-veeeee long enough that one would not be caught dead calling it the dee-emm-veeeee to remember the glory days of local TV-news.
And one of those who had a place in there was Ken Mease, who for 17 years starting in 1986 was in the sports department of WUSA (Channel 9), which at the time vied with WRC (Channel 4) for supremacy on the local-TV-news front.
Mease first served as second-in-command to the legendary Glenn Brenner, and after Glenn’s tragically early death in 1992 moved up to anchor the sports for a while. (WUSA at one time also brought back Warner Wolf, who had preceded Brenner before going to New York, but that lasted only a couple of years.)
Ken was 80 when he passed this week, according to news reports. Sending the news along to my brother and father who are both down in Florida, they had fond memories of his work. Good to be remembered in such a way!
According to the obit, Mease had quite a career, including service in the 1970s as athletic director (and, briefly, men’s basketball coach) at Robert Morris University. He also worked at TV and radio stations in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Rhode Island before landing here.
Alas, the news biz is nothing like it used to be (tell me about it …) and local TV news these days is, with a few exceptions, a mere shell of the glory days of the late 1970s through late 1980s. Those of us around at the time, however, have the fond memories.
SPEAKING OF SPORTS: This week’s print editions (also available here online) have 8-page preview sections of the fall high-school sports season. Been a while since we’ve had one of those, and sports czar Dave Facinoli went the extra mile to provide coverage.
High-school football season here in Northern Virginia kicked off last night, with many more games to come tonight. Count on the Sun Gazette to provide full coverage – we’re on the ball even if all the other, ahem, “local” media outlets have fumbled local sports coverage.
– Scott McCaffrey