Abel Schechter; First Director of News at NBC

Abel Alan (Abe) Schechter, the first news director for NBC and the first executive producer of the “Today” show, has died in a car accident.

Schechter, 81, was killed Wednesday with his wife, Fritzi, 82, who was driving the couple’s car when it ran off a Long Island highway and struck a tree, Southampton police said Thursday.

Schechter wrote two books about his exploits as a journalist, “Go Ahead Garrison” in 1940 and, with Edward Anthony, “I Live on the Air,” in which he recounted an anecdote that broadcasters were to associate with him for the rest of his life.

In that book, published in 1941, he told of the time he directed an NBC Radio reporter to set up for what he thought was to be the first broadcast from the base of the Egyptian pyramids at a time when remote broadcasts were rare and difficult.

His reporter arrived to find a CBS reporter already on the air from the opposite side of the pyramid. He phoned Schechter for advice and was told, “Then go to the top of the pyramid.” The order became a catch phrase for producers to dramatize the importance of being first.

Schechter, a newspaper editor and reporter, was hired by NBC in 1932 to organize and run the network’s news department, which he did until 1942.

During World War II, he was attached to the staff of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, supervising radio and press communications for war correspondents.

From 1945 to 1950, he was a vice president of the Mutual Broadcasting System, which he left to work briefly at Crowell Collier Publishing Co.

He then returned to NBC to help create the “Today” show and became its first executive producer.

He left in 1952 to start a public relations company.