Jack Perkins

Jack Perkins was an American journalist and television personality.

After graduating from college in 1956, he joined an ABC-TV affiliate in Cleveland. He went to NBC in 1961, becoming a writer for David Brinkley, the Washington-based anchor of the network’s evening news show, The Huntley-Brinkley Report.

Early in his career, Perkins was a foreign correspondent for NBC in Asia and helped cover many notable stories of the 1960s, including the Cuban missile crisis, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Vietnam War. He made appearances on NBC Nightly News, Today, and the series NBC Magazine and Prime Time Sunday.

Perkins became a local news anchor at the Los Angeles NBC affiliate in 1982, then stepped away in 1986, moving with his wife to an island off the coast of Maine. He returned to broadcasting in 1991, hosting and/or narrating numerous other television programs, most notably the A&E documentary series Biography, which he hosted from 1994 to 1999.

From 2004 to 2012, Perkins was the host of A Gulf Coast Journal, a public television show which won several local Emmys in Florida.

Perkins died August 19, 2019, in Nokomis, Florida. He was 85.