Frank McGee (journalism)

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Frank McGee (September 12, 1915-April 17, 1974) was a television journalist.

Born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in the United States, McGee was a news reporter for NBC beginning in the mid-1950s. He had a great talent for descriptive language, giving viewers a word picture of the day's events. NBC News's Chet Huntley broke the news of John F. Kennedy's assassination; McGee was in the studio with Huntley speaking on the phone with Robert MacNeil from Dallas. McGee was on the air for 45 hours, reporting without a script. In the early 1960's, he was also a news reporter on the NBC radio show Monitor.

In 1970, he co-anchored the NBC Nightly News with John Chancellor. He moved to The Today Show in 1971, replacing Hugh Downs who had hosted the program since 1962. McGee moved The Today Show into a more serious news presentation, insisting on opening and closing the show by himself while sharing other duties with his co-host Barbara Walters. He remained on the air until early April of 1974, when he was forced to leave the program due to an illness which was diagnosed as bone cancer. He succumbed to the cancer on April 17, 1974 at age 55, less than two weeks after his last Today broadcast. McGee was replaced by another Oklahoma native, Jim Hartz, who co-hosted the show with Walters until 1976.

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