Tuesday, Sept. 7, 2004 | 11:03 a.m.
Bill DiMeolo, a broadcasting executive who guided KVVU-TV Channel 5 through its formative years and later was a driving force behind the success of other local television and radio stations, died Sunday at his Las Vegas home. He was 72.
The cause of death was a sustained respiratory illness, his family said.
Services for the Las Vegas resident of 33 years are pending.
"Bill oversaw the station at a time when Channel 5 was operating out of a small former gasoline station on the Boulder Highway -- a tough time when there was a question about whether it would make it," said Las Vegas advertising executive Tom Letizia, who worked for DiMeolo at Channel 5 in the 1970s.
"He was a pioneer and a legend in this business." DiMeolo was inducted into the Nevada Broadcasters Hall of Fame in Las Vegas last year.
Letizia was writing commercials for Channel 5 when DiMeolo "gave me my first big break" and moved him to sales. In turn, DiMeolo hired broadcaster Ralph Menard, who put KVVU on the map locally with his station identification catch phrase "Henderson, Laaaaaaaaaaas Vegas." Menard died in January.
"Bill hired Ralph and many of the station's other broadcasters and gave them a chance for future success," Letizia said.
DiMeolo is considered the person who put the then-independent station in a strong enough position for owner William Hernstadt to sell to a group headed by entertainer Johnny Carson, Letizia said.
DiMeolo also was an executive at other Las Vegas broadcasting outlets, including KORK TV-3, KSHO TV-13, KVEG 970 AM, KTRI 92.3 FM, KENO 1460AM, KLUC AM/FM 98.5, KJUL 104.3 FM and KBMI 1400 AM.
Born June 22, 1932, in Pittsburgh, DiMeolo began what would be a half-century-long career in broadcasting after graduating from high school in 1950. He attended Penn State for two years and served in the Air Force from 1953 to 1957. He was stationed at Nellis Air Force Base in 1953.
DiMeolo's first supervisory position at a radio station was as assistant general manager of WDAD Radio in Indiana, Pa., after he got out of the service. He was general manager of KATO Radio in Stafford, Ariz., before moving to Las Vegas in 1967.
DiMeolo worked for KENO radio and KORK-TV before Hernstadt hired him in the early 1970s as general sales manager of Channel 5. He was promoted to vice president and general manager of the TV station in January 1974.
In 1978 DiMeolo started his own advertising agency Ad-Venture. There he began the Las Vegas Merchant Co-op, where he would buy 30 seconds of television commercial time, then produce three 10-second spots for companies that otherwise could not afford to advertise on TV.
He operated his ad agency until 1989, then moved to Chattanooga Tenn., where he fulfilled his lifelong dream and purchased his own radio station WTYR-FM. DiMeolo sold the station four years later and returned to Las Vegas, where he was general manager of KJUL from 1993 until his retirement in 1997 at age 65.
He is survived by his wife, Rhonda, of Las Vegas; three sons, William of Alisa Viejo, Calif., Steven of Huntington Beach, Calif., and Robert and his wife, Cyndi, of Philadelphia; two daughters, Kimberly and her husband, Jay, of Bishop, Calif., and Annette of Las Vegas; and four grandsons.
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