Bill Steel

Bill Steel (born 20 May 1939) is a broadcaster and actor from North East England, best known for his work at Tyne Tees Television and Metro Radio.

Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, Steel was educated at Pendower Boys School in Newcastle and at Durham University.

He began his working life at the General Electric as a trainee accountant, and moved into television in the 1960s, first working in the Tyne Tees Television Presentation Department as an assistant Transmission controller and at the age of 23, a presentation director. Later he progressed into the advertising section, which involved doing voice over work for over 10,000 local adverts produced in-house.

In 1967, he moved to Manchester where he presented weekend regional news bulletins for ABC Television. Steel later moved to ABC's Midlands operation in Birmingham and became its chief announcer until 1968, when the station's staff were redeployed Thames Television in London, where ABC had a majority stake. There, Steel worked in various departments, most of which he had previous experience, such as commercial voice overs, newsreading and transmission control. Through his voiceover work, ended up doing a short spell of continuity announcing for Thames, before returning to the north in 1971.

Employed once again by Tyne Tees, Steel worked as one of a number of presenters for the station's regional news programming and became its main anchor for the flagship 20-minute evening programme, Today At Six, and from 1976, the newly launched Northern Life.

In 1980, Steel moved from news presenting back to continuity announcing for Tyne Tees, taking over as Chief Announcer and Head of Presentation in 1988, from incumbent Neville Wanless. Despite returning to announcing, he continued to read regular local news bulletins until the late 1980s. Alongside Kathy Secker, he remained as one of the last Newcastle-based announcers until March 1996 when the stations owners, Yorkshire-Tyne Tees Television, moved the department to their own studios in Leeds. Steel signed off from continuity announcing on 16 March 1996 - one of his colleagues, the late Allan Cartner, made the final announcement from Newcastle later that night.

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