BILL O'REILLY Biography - Socialites, celebrities and People in the fashion industry

 
 

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BILL O'REILLY

Name: Bill O'Reilly.                                                                     
Born: 10 September 1949 New York City, NY, U.S.                                           
                                                                                         
                                                                                         
William James "Bill" O'Reilly, Jr. (born September 10, 1949) is an American               
television/radio host, author, and political commentator. He is the host of the           
cable news program The O'Reilly Factor. Prior to hosting The O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly   
served as anchor of the entertainment program, Inside Edition. O'Reilly also             
hosts The Radio Factor, a radio program syndicated by Westwood One, and has               
written seven books.                                                                     
                                                                                         
O'Reilly was born in New York City to parents William and Angela O'Reilly, from           
Brooklyn, New York and Bergen County, New Jersey. His father was an accountant           
for the oil company Caltex. In 1951, his family moved to Levittown on Long               
Island. After graduating from Chaminade High School, a private Catholic boys             
high school in Mineola in 1967, O'Reilly attended Marist College. While at               
Marist, O'Reilly played punter in the National Club Football Association, and             
was also a writer for the school's newspaper, The Circle. An honors student, he           
majored in history. He spent his junior year of college abroad, attending Queen           
Mary College at the University of London. O'Reilly received his B.A. in                   
History in 1971. He played semi-professional baseball during this time, as a             
pitcher for the Brooklyn Monarchs. He unsuccessfully tried out for the New York           
Mets. O'Reilly later earned a master's degree in Broadcast Journalism from               
Boston University (where he attended school with Howard Stern) and another               
Master of Public Administration from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of                 
Government.                                                                               
                                                                                         
Bill O'Reilly in 1975 as the "Action Consumer trouble shooter" for ABC affiliate         
WNEP in Scranton, Pennsylvania.                                                           
                                                                                         
After graduating from Marist College, O'Reilly moved to Miami, Florida at age 21,         
where he taught English and history at Monsignor Pace High School for two years.         
After leaving Miami, O'Reilly returned to school, earning a M.A. in Broadcast             
Journalism from Boston University in 1976. While attending Boston University, he         
was a reporter and columnist for various local newspapers and alternative news           
weeklies, including The Boston Phoenix. O'Reilly did his broadcast journalism             
internship in Miami during this time, and was also an entertainment writer and           
movie critic for The Miami Herald.                                                       
                                                                                         
O'Reilly's early television news career included reporting and anchoring                 
positions at WNEP-TV in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he also reported the               
weather. At WFAA-TV in Dallas, Texas, O'Reilly was awarded the Dallas Press Club         
Award for excellence in investigative reporting. He then moved to KMGH-TV in             
Denver, Colorado where he won a Local Emmy Award for his coverage of a                   
skyjacking. O'Reilly also worked for KATU-TV in Portland, Oregon, as well                 
as TV stations in Hartford, Connecticut (WFSB-TV), and in Boston, Massachusetts.         
                                                                                         
In 1980, he anchored his own program on WCBS-TV in New York where he won his             
second Local Emmy for an investigation of corrupt city marshals. In 1982, he was         
promoted to the network as a CBS News correspondent and covered the wars in El           
Salvador and the Falkland Islands from his base in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He           
later left CBS over a dispute concerning the uncredited use in a report by Bob           
Schieffer of riot footage shot by O'Reilly's crew in Buenos Aires during the             
Falklands conflict. (A 1998 novel by O'Reilly, Those Who Trespass: A Novel of             
Television and Murder, depicts a television reporter who has a similar dispute           
over a Falklands War report. The character proceeds to exact his revenge on               
network staff in a series of graphically-described murders.)                             
                                                                                         
In 1986, O'Reilly joined ABC News as a correspondent for ABC World News Tonight.         
                                                                                         
In 1989, O'Reilly joined the nationally syndicated King World (now CBS) program           
Inside Edition, a tabloid/gossip television program in competition with A                 
Current Affair. He started as senior correspondent and backup anchor for British         
TV host David Frost, and subsequently became the program's anchor after Frost's           
termination. In addition to being one of the first American broadcasters to               
cover the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, O'Reilly also obtained the first               
exclusive interview with murderer Joel Steinberg and was the first television             
host from a national current affairs program on the scene of the 1992 Los                 
Angeles riots.                                                                           
                                                                                         
In 1995, O'Reilly was replaced by former NBC News and CBS News anchor Deborah             
Norville on Inside Edition. He then enrolled at the Kennedy School of Government         
at Harvard University, where he received a master's degree in Public                     
Administration. After Harvard, he was hired by Roger Ailes, chairman and CEO of           
the then startup FOX News Channel, to anchor The O'Reilly Report. The show soon           
moved to a new time slot, and was renamed The O'Reilly Factor.                           
                                                                                         
O'Reilly's radio program reaches 3.25 million-plus listeners and is carried by           
more than 400 radio stations. Conservative magazine NewsMax's "Top 25 Talk               
Radio Host" list selected O'Reilly to the #2 spot as most influential host in             
the nation.