Former WSAZ news director and anchor Bos Johnson died Sunday, according to the Charleston-Huntington, NBC affiliate.
Johnson was a much-loved figure in local broadcasting. Jim Casto, retired associate editor of The Herald-Disptach compared him to a local version of Walter Cronkite. “The authoritative Cronkite covered the big stories of the day – the Vietnam War, Watergate, the slayings of President John F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. In much the same reassuring fashion, Johnson detailed for WSAZ’s viewers the region’s big stories,”
Johnson started at WSAZ in 1952. He was named news director in 1960. He left the station in 1976 and served as an associate professor of broadcast journalism at Marshall University. He also worked as a consultants for the Charles Ryan Associates. later becoming VP for the company.
“For a quarter century, WSAZ viewers got to know Bos Johnson,” WSAZ wrote on its website. “He was an anchor and reporter for the station during a time in which several major news stories took place. Bos covered the Marshall University plane crash and the collapse of the Silver Bridge.”
“He was my mentor and my friend,” former WSAZ reporter Tom Jacobs wrote in an email to TVSpy. “His family embraced me as one of their own, so much so I slept on their couch when I couldn’t find an apartment after arriving in Huntington all those many years ago!”
Johnson is survived by his wife Dotty, his five children including Rob Johnson, a morning news anchor at WSAZ.