Bob Hite

Who was Bob Hite?

Bob Hite, Sr. was an American radio and television announcer, voice-over artist, and news anchor.

Hite began his announcing career in the 1930s at WXYZ in Detroit, Michigan. During his years there, he was among the announcers for such old-time radio shows as The Lone Ranger, The Green Hornet, "The Shadow", and Challenge of the Yukon.

In 1944, Hite joined the New York announcing staff of CBS. His radio announcing credits for the network included Let's Pretend, Casey, Crime Photographer, and The CBS Radio Workshop. On VE Day, Bob Hite was the first of the CBS staff to announce the Victory in Europe, on airwaves coast to coast. After WWII, Hite was seen live on the fledgling medium of television as spokesman for GE appliances of all kinds, performing live commercials on the Fred Waring Show. During those early years of television, Hite was an anchor of five-minute morning news updates for the local CBS flagship station, WCBS-TV; at one point, he was paired with fellow announcer Peter Thomas on those newscasts. Also during that time frame he solo-anchored the local/metropolitan evening news casts as well. In the early and mid-1950s, Hite was narrator of several short films for RKO Pictures, including one of Stanley Kubrick's early works, Flying Padre.