Longtime Chicago broadcast executive Jim Corno, the president of Comcast SportsNet Chicago, died Tuesday from cancer. He was 66.
“Probably the greatest thing we admired most about Jim was that he truly cared about our personal lives. He was everyone’s second dad. He never forgot a birthday, a wedding, a birth, a passing of a loved one…he was always in the know,” CSN Chicago senior director of communications Jeff Nuich wrote in an online tribute to Corno. “Not because he felt like that’s what the head of a station should do, but he just felt like that’s how you should be as a person…to always care…to always love.”
Since moving to Chicago in 1984, Corno led SportsVision, SportsChannel and Fox Sports Net Chicago before launching Comcast SportsNet Chicago in 2004. After his first television job in the mailroom at KLPR in St. Louis, Corno went on to work as operations manager at WTOP in Washington, D.C. and program manager at WDIV in Detroit. [h/t Robert Feder]