Bob Engler, KOMO 4 booth announcer, hydro sportscaster, radio executive

View Comments

• Any idea if Bob Engler is the booth announcer heard here: https://youtu.be/-AfjS499ihQ

  This voice was heard on Channel 4 into the '80s.

  • At the time this article (in our post) was written, Engler had put in 25 years in broadcasting. A good career for anyone.

    Article from October 1968: Shortly after 5:30 a.m. on a clear pre-dawn Sunday in March, KOMO-TV news announcer Bob Engler climbed into his car at 1518 NE 97th St., and headed for work.Engler drove south down the Seattle Freeway, noted the green "go" arrow for the reversible lane expressway, proceeded through the tunnel and emerged into the expressway entrance at NE 73rd Street.Engler recalls:
    "I remember the gates were open. I remember looking at the Olympics and thinking, 'Why do I have to work?'"'BARRICADE'"Then in a split instant I must have realized there was something in front of me. That's when a swinging barricade hit me."Later, my wife found the guts of my watch under the brake pedal. It had stopped at 5:39. Everything stopped for me then, too."I didn't wake up until two days later in the hospital. Which shocked everybody. I was supposed to die." The gate that swung out into the expressway and smashed Engler's windshield is one of seven barricades at the Bothell Way exit that are manually opened and closed each day by State Highway Department crews. A little more than a month before Engler's accident, a 39-year-old father of five —Richard Glenn Williams—was killed at the same spot.Lawsuits are pending in both cases and a spokesman for the Williams family preferred not to discuss the tragedy.---------

    In later years, though he may have remained with KOMO 4, as Seattle papers show he was also announcing at Longacres, college sports, hydros, Golden Gloves boxing along with Stan Naccarato, Ted Bell and Morrie Alhadeff, as late as 1975.

    This video would have been 1962, when Connie Lee was with the Chuck Mahaffay group. So, yes, this is Bob Engler announcing. (Great find!)

    Tris Mahaffy has quite a few clips of Chuck Mahaffay & the Individuals taken from episodes of Telescope on KING 5, The Buddy Webber Show and Len Sampson Show on KOMO 4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoM2WpnVMuU

    • Mahaffay was one of the KFKF personalities.

    • Here's a 1975 KOMO telecast of a Sounders soccer match where Engler has at least one live read in every break: https://youtu.be/kh1BESSkIsU?t=4140

      There are several examples of him on YouTube doing Fourmost Movie intros. The latest one is from November 1987: https://youtu.be/2wQLlUnflRo?t=48

      • Ahhh, the days when local tv had movies throughout the day rather than syndicated shows non-stop.

• Quite the history and so much accomplished in his lifetime.