Don Gillis (sportscaster)
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Donald A. Gillis (August 1, 1922 – April 23, 2008)
Radio and sportscasting career
Gillis was born in
WHDH at the time was the flagship station of the Boston Red Sox, and carried Boston Celtics basketball, Boston Bruins hockey and Harvard University football during the autumn and winter months. Gillis hosted pregame coverage of Red Sox games — his "Warmup Time" five-minute segment often revisited great moments in baseball history – and was a color commentator on Bruins and Celtics games. During the 1957 season, he joined the Red Sox' broadcast team when the primary announcer, Curt Gowdy, was sidelined for the year by a back injury. Gillis also called New England Patriots preseason games.
The most famous
During the mid-to-late 1960s, he was the play-by-play announcer for a limited schedule of Boston Celtic games on WHDH-TV.
Television sports anchor
But Gillis became best known as a television sports anchor. He began his sports report on October 1, 1962 (the same night Johnny Carson debuted as host of The Tonight Show). WHDH-TV expanded its late news from 15 minutes to a full half-hour to accommodate extended weather and sports segments. During the period when WHDH-TV held the license to Boston's Channel 5, the station was the flagship of the Red Sox TV network. After the team's improbable 1967 American League pennant, its TV ratings soared and Gillis was able to use film highlights of the team's games during his sportscasts. However, relatively few of the games were telecast compared to today's diet of 162 regular season broadcasts, and Ch. 5 would send a cameraman to the games that were not telecast live. This often meant that the 11 p.m. newscast featured only highlights from the early through middle innings, since the film had to be rushed from Fenway Park to the station's studios in Dorchester to be developed, edited and finally aired. Gillis would use the filmed highlights to set the stage for "telling" the audience about the late, and often decisive, action.
In March 1972, however, Herald-Traveler Corp. lost its battle for a permanent license for the television property. Gillis, along with much of the on-air staff, were hired by the new licensee, Boston Broadcasters Inc., to establish an on-air presence at the new WCVB-TV, and Gillis carried on as sports director. Even though the Red Sox did not follow, ratings for the station's newscasts at 6 and 11 p.m. remained high. When WCVB-TV was acquired by Metromedia in 1982 for the highest price then ever paid for a local television station, Gillis was one of many stockholders who profited handsomely from the transaction.
Candlepin Bowling host
He retired from NewsCenter 5 broadcasts a year after the sale, although his son, Gary Gillis, continued as a sportscaster and sports anchor in the market for the city's
Gillis retired to his home in Falmouth on Cape Cod. During his last years, he suffered from Alzheimer's disease.[7] He also endured a series of strokes three weeks before his death at home.[8]
References
- ^ Social Security Death Index (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.), 2011.
- ^ Don Gillis, Dean Of Boston TV Sports, Dies - Boston News Story - WCVB Boston Archived May 18, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
- ^ John Vellante. "Recreation is Right Up His Alley." Boston Globe, July 6, 1997, p. NW 13.
- ^ McGrath, Charles. "Harvard Beats Yale 29–29," Yale Alumni Magazine, November/December 2008. Archived 2012-04-02 at the Wayback Machine
- YouTube
- ^ WCBC Hall of Fame
- ^ Boston sportscasting pioneer Don Gillis, 85 - Local News Updates - The Boston Globe
- ^ WHDH-TV - New England News - Don Gillis, dean of Boston TV sportscasting, dies at 85 Archived May 24, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
Further reading
- Fitzgerald, Joe (September 1, 2020). "Witness to history: On deck the day Japan surrendered to end WWII". Boston Herald. Retrieved September 3, 2020.
External links
- "1984 Candlepin Bowling Championship - Introduction (Part 1)". Archived from the original on 2021-12-21 – via YouTube.