R.I.P. L.A. Newsman Jess Marlow

The longtime Los Angeles TV news anchor died of Alzheimer’s complications at his Colorado home during the weekend. Jess Marlow was 84. He was one of the most familiar faces on Southland TV for nearly four decades, bringing viewers the big stories and human interest reports long before the advent of cable news or the Internet. After stints at a local station near his home in Salem, IL, and a reporter gig at then-ABC affiliate KNTV in San Jose, Marlow started his LA career in 1966 as the host and anchor of News Conference, a public affairs show on KNBC. He moved to the station’s anchor chair two years later, at one point doing the 5PM news with Tom Snyder and the 11PM report opposite Tom Brokaw. “Jess Marlow was a first-rate journalist and a beloved figure in the newsroom,” Brokaw said today in a statement. “He was an important part of the team that inaugurated the two-hour local news on KNBC and served as anchor of every broadcast at one time or another.” In 1980, Marlow moved to rival KNXT, the CBS affiliate now known as KCBS. He anchored there for six years before jumping back to KNBC, where he remained until retiring in 1997. But the retirement didn’t stick: In 2001, he was persuaded to replace Warren Olney as co-anchor of Life & Times, the public affairs show of then-PBS outlet KCET. He hung ’em up for good in May 2003. Marlow won a number of Los Angeles Area News Emmys, including its highest career honor, the Governors Award, and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.