She was the face of WCET-TV pledge drives for decades.
Grace Hill, who died Saturday Dec. 9, was known by viewers as the perpetually upbeat white-haired woman who asked them to support the station until her retirement in 2009, after 47 years.
What viewers likely didn't know was that Hill oversaw the programming that aired on WCET-TV, especially the wide variety of local programs in the 1970s, '80s and '90s, when the station produced a lot of local documentaries and some national entertainment shows.
Erich Kunzel's national "Cincinnati Pops Holiday" specials, Lilias Folan's yoga series, Joe Nuxhall's interviews with Dennis Janson and the weekly "Focus" public affairs shows were produced during her tenure.
The list of her specials is impressive: "Powel Crosley Jr. and the 20th Century" (1988); Kathy Wade's "JazzStruck"(1989); "Keep America Singing" with championship barbershop quartets (1994); "Because They Were Jews: Cincinnati Survivors Remember the Holocaust" (1995); "Safe at Home: Crosley Field and the Reds" (1995); "Time Out: Talk Radio Unplugged" with NPR's Scott Simon (1996); "Cincinnati Reflections" (1997); "Zinzinnati Reflections" (1999); "Bravo Paavo! The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra" (2001); "Cincinnati Reflections III: The War Years –Life At Home" (2001); "Music Hall: Cincinnati Finds Its Voice" (2005); and "Cincinnati Parks: Emeralds in the Crown" (2009).
Full disclosure here: She asked me in 2007 to interview WLW-AM's Gary Burbank for a four-part series that aired in 2007 when he left radio. She called me again before retiring in 2009 for help crossing an item off her bucket list, asking if I would interview Nick Clooney about his career. (She had long hoped George Clooney would interview his dad, but settled for me.) The five-part "Clooney on Clooney" aired in 2010.
"It is not an overstatement to say she had her fingerprints on most every locally produced CET program from the early '70s through her retirement," ," says Jack Dominic, former Channel 48 station manager, who now runs the National Voice of America Museum of Broadcasting in West Chester Township.
