George Page, the creator and resonant on-air voice of the award-winning public television series “Nature,” has died in Equinunk, Pa. He was 71.
He died June 28 of cancer, said Roz Kay, a spokeswoman for Channel 13, the PBS station in New York where Mr. Page worked from 1973 to 1998.
From the ice fields of Greenland to the African savanna, Mr. Page guided viewers to the variety of wildlife. From 1982, when “Nature” was first broadcast, until his retirement, Mr. Page was the host and narrator of nearly 300 episodes.
In 1987 and again in 1988, the program received Emmy Awards for outstanding informational series.
“It was George’s idea to put on a weekly natural history series where the subject matter was far more esoteric than anything that had ever been on TV,” said Fred Kaufman, executive producer of “Nature” for the last 15 years. “It was very different to go for up to two minutes without any narration, just the sound and the beauty of the images.”
Mr. Page’s father owned a funeral home, and at 14 Mr. Page used his deep voice and his connections to get a job at a local radio station as host of a show called “Obituary Column of the Air.”
In 1957 Page graduated from Emory University. Two years later he was hired by WSB-TV, the NBC affiliate in Atlanta, where he reported on the civil rights movement. He was then promoted to foreign correspondent for NBC News and covered the Vietnam War. In 1968 he directed and narrated “We Won’t Go,” an examination of the growing resistance to the draft.
In 1972 Mr. Page moved to PBS headquarters in Washington.
