James Dibble

James Dibble
James Dibble reading the first news bulletin on ABC TV in 1956
Born	4 February 1923 Newtown, New South Wales, Australia
Died	13 December 2010(2010-12-13) (aged 87) Narrabeen
Occupation	Television Newsreader
Years active	1956–1983

James Edward Dibble AM MBE (4 February 1923 – 13 December 2010) was an Australian television presenter, best known as the presenter of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's (ABC) Sydney news, reading the first news bulletin in 1956, and remaining with the ABC for 27 years up until his retirement in 1983.

Dibble joined the ABC after the end of World War II. He started as a clerk in the accounts department. His voice soon attracted attention, and in Canberra he gained his first ABC job in radio doing voice-overs.

Dibble was best known as the senior newsreader for ABC-TV, beginning with the first televised news bulletin on ABN-2 Sydney on 5 November 1956. He reported the biggest news stories of the period, including the Soviet intervention in the Hungarian Revolution (in his very first bulletin; the events in Hungary caused the scheduled commencement of the ABC-TV news service to be brought forward), the assassination of John F. Kennedy (1963), the disappearance of Prime Minister Harold Holt (1967), the Apollo 11 Moon landing (1969), the destruction of Darwin by Cyclone Tracy (1974), and the dismissal of the Whitlam government (1975).

He appeared as himself in episodes of the ABC-TV comedy series Our Man In Canberra and Our Man In The Company episodes, narrated segments of the radiophonic works 'What's Rangoon To You Is Grafton To Me'(1978) and 'Hot Bananas', written by Russell Guy and originally broadcast on radio station 2JJ (Double Jay). Dibble also did voice-over work for many newsreels, documentaries and educational films.