George Leigh Hall, 82, a public television leader in North Carolina, Illinois and Virginia, died June 5 at a retirement home in Fuquay-Varina, N.C.
His wife of 60 years, Katherine Waddington Hall, had died six months earlier.
After starting in radio during the 1940s in his hometown of Reidsville, N.C., north of Raleigh, Hall joined Capitol Broadcasting Company’s WRAL-AM in Raleigh and advanced to program manager; helped the company acquire a television license and served as the TV station’s first program manager.
In 1960, Hall became g.m. of North Carolina State University’s Raleigh studios of the state educational TV network, UNC-TV. Later he headed the telecommunications department at the University of Delaware at Newark.
In Illinois, he served as president of Convocom, a three-station confederation of stations in Springfield, Macomb and Quincy.
During the 1980s, he served as the Virginia government’s director of telecommunications under Gov. Charles Robb. He also consulted with instructional TV startups in other countries, and wrote a series of columns in Current about new technologies and the concept of the public “teleplex” or public telecommunications center. As a fan of Alistaire Cooke, Hall marked Cooke’s retirement with a verse in Current.
After retirement, Hall and his wife, Kay, returned to Raleigh.
Surviving are a son, George Franklin Hall; a daughter, Anne Dillard Hall Rice, and a granddaughter, Lauren Nicole Rice.
A memorial service for both George and Kay Hall will be held at 3 p.m., June 15 at Windsor Point Retirement Community in Fuquay-Varina, N.C., south of Raleigh.