Bob Braun; TV Host Played Reporter in Films

Bob Braun, the suave former host of KTTV’s “Good Day, L.A.,” and a character actor in films and television who spent much of his career as a Midwestern regional talk show host, has died. He was 71.

Braun, prominent in Los Angeles television and special events from 1984 to 1994, died Jan. 15 in his suburban Cincinnati home of complications from cancer and Parkinson’s disease.

His motion pictures, in which he was invariably cast as a reporter, included “Diehard II,” “Christmas in Connecticut” and “Defending Your Life.”

Among Braun’s KTTV assignments was co-hosting telecasts of the Tournament of Roses Parade. He also co-hosted “Everybody’s Money Matters,” a two-hour infomercial on cable, and did several home shopping and reality shows.

Braun ended his career where he had begun it at age 13--on Cincinnati radio station WSAI-AM--as a disc jockey. He stepped down in November of 1999 after illness made his sonorous voice hoarse.

A native of Ludlow, Ky., just across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, Braun at 13 was hired to host a radio game show on WSAI about children’s baseball.

In 1957, while working on Cincinnati television, Braun appeared on “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts” national network show. He sang “All the Things You Are” and won--presaging a durable recording career in which he produced some 20 albums and 100 singles.

After the contest appearance, he moved to Cincinnati’s WLW-TV where he hosted bandstand shows and record hops.

Then Braun was asked to join Ruth Lyons on her “50-50 Show,” a talk program he renamed “The Bob Braun Show” after her retirement in 1967. The popular show was syndicated in nine states until its demise in 1984.

One of Braun’s less-than-happy memories of his Los Angeles decade was the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

“I thought we were going to die,” he told the Dayton Daily News after moving back to Ohio. “It was different from anything we’d ever felt. We went downstairs and got under the dining room table.”

Braun is survived by his wife, Wray Jean, and three adult children, Rob, Doug and Melissa.