Robert H. Forward; Innovator in Radio, TV

Robert H. Forward, a pioneering radio and television producer and manager who established precedents in news coverage in Los Angeles and wrote and acted in such television fare as “Adam-12,” has died. He was 85.

Forward died of leukemia Jan. 30 at his home in Los Angeles, said his son, Robert H. Forward Jr.

Born and reared in San Diego, educated at Stanford, and originally a disc jockey and game show host in San Francisco, Forward spent the bulk of his multifaceted career in Los Angeles. He started working here for the Mutual Don Lee Broadcasting System’s KHJ radio in 1941 as an announcer, producer and director. Shortly after, he began four years as a pilot and counterintelligence agent in the Army Air Force during World War II.

Forward’s lengthy resume wove seamlessly from radio to television and back again and again. He produced his first live television show over Lee’s experimental Los Angeles television station W6XAO in 1946, and in 1949 went to KTTV Channel 11, then jointly owned by The Times and CBS.

The station was broadcasting live from the top floor of the Bekins building at Santa Monica Boulevard and Highland Avenue and, as program manager, Forward brought in Hollywood performers for interviews to give KTTV a “movie look.” There he developed the technique of using three cameras to photograph live dramatic programs with full-color, motion picture-type sets, to improve the quality of the black-and-white telecast.

Even more significantly, Forward initiated the first television newscast in the country to use film of local news stories, shot and broadcast the same day.

In 1950, he left KTTV for CBS Television to become associate producer and director for live broadcasts of such programs as “The Jack Benny Show,” “Burns and Allen” and “The Allen Young Show.”

In the mid-1950s, Forward became program director of KECA Channel 7, then owned by United Paramount theaters, where his first act was changing the call letters to KABC.

In 1956, it was back to radio, where Forward became known as “the sound of KMPC.” As program director there for five years, he pioneered use of mobile units and helicopters for 24-hour, live news coverage. He was also the innovator of one-minute radio editorials, a news programming feature soon copied by other radio stations.

European Assignments

In another innovation, Forward sent a KMPC reporter, Lloyd Perrin, through Europe in 1961 for a series called “On Assignment.”

“With the world situation as it is today,” Forward told The Times, “we believe that news programming is the most important phase of modern radio. [It’s] an effort to broaden our news coverage, to give our listeners a more comprehensive news study.”

Forward was general manager at KLAC radio from 1961 to 1964 and at KRLA from 1978 to 1982. In between, he ran his own communications consulting firm.

And he dabbled successfully in entertainment television. Through a Los Angeles Police Department friend who was a consultant to Jack Webb’s Mark VII Productions, Forward wrote a few scripts for Webb’s “Adam-12” reality-based television series.

That led to a job as creator and producer on Webb’s “The D.A.,” starring Robert Conrad and Harry Morgan in 1971-72. Forward took the entertainment television tangent, he told The Times, because “I was bored with myself more than anything. I knew I could do a lot of things reasonably well and I decided right then to get back to creating.”

Forward portrayed a judge in the premiere episode of “The D.A.” and appeared for two years as the hospital administrator on “Marcus Welby, M.D.,” starring Robert Young and James Brolin. Forward had brief roles in other television shows and movies as well.

Over the years, he was a popular fund-raiser for such organizations as the American Cancer Society and was a board member of the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters.

Forward is survived by three children, Robert Jr., William and Bonnie Forward.