Bob Losure

Bob Losure Speaker Biography

Former Anchor for CNN Headline News

and Cancer Survivor

Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, former CNN Headline News Anchor Bob Losure has traveled America and the world as newscaster, keynote speaker, and emcee. After attending the University of Oklahoma, and graduating with a journalism degree from the University of Tulsa, Bob worked in the Detroit market as radio news anchor at the legendary Big 8, CKLW, a station that covered 27 states with the sound of Motown.

Bob later anchored local TV news for nine years at the CBS affiliate in Tulsa, then was forced to look for another job when he discovered he had testicular cancer. He not only survived it, but found a long-time home anchoring at CNN Headline News in Atlanta for 11 years for Ted Turner.

Bob’s most recent news project in 2006 involved a nine-month anchoring stint for an internet-based daily real estate newscast in San Diego. Funded by Dyson and Dyson Real Estate in Southern California and backed by an impressive group of reporters, producers and state-of-the-art web technology, Mr. Losure provided interviews with top real estate experts for the start-up website, DNN.TV. The website appeared under the business page of Yahoo.com, and featured Bob’s interview with billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump during the opening of the Trump National Golf Course and Estates at Rancho Palos Verdes, CA.

Bob teamed up with veteran CBS sportscaster Dick Enberg on promotions for the website, and demonstrated that a website devoted to objective news about the ups and downs of the real estate world did indeed have a place in the news world. The site even attracted the attention of such giants as Yahoo.com, which used parts of the DNN.TV daily report on its worldwide website.

Anchoring and reporting from Atlanta with CNN Headline News since the early years of the network, Bob Losure covered such history-making events as Hurricane Hugo, the San Francisco Earthquake, Manuel Noriega’s capture and return to the U.S., and Nelson Mandela’s visit to America. His years at CNN gave him a level of experience that few national anchors have been privileged to have.

As a professional emcee, speaker, and corporate spokesperson, Bob has appeared before over 200 groups and organizations. His May, 2005 appearance as emcee of the three-day Outdoor Advertising Association of America convention in Chicago marked his seventh consecutive year with that group. Bob was also active in Las Vegas, emceeing the Washington, DC-based Edison Electric Institute Convention featuring former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. In recent years, Bob has also hosted the OfficeMax and RadioShack Conventions in Las Vegas. For a complete listing of Bob’s speaking and emcee contacts, click on “Professional Speaking” on this website.

His autobiography, Five Seconds to Air, focuses on his CNN career as well as the humorous things that go wrong when you’re doing live television news. In the book from Providence House Publishers, Bob gives a very personal look at his own 1985 battle with testicular cancer and how it led him to seek and get the CNN Headline News anchor job. He also talks about his interview on ’60 Minutes’ ’ with reporter Ed Bradley.

In his "Lights…Camera…Cancer!" speech to groups ranging from the annual Patient Conference at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, to The American Cancer Society chapters in Kansas City, Detroit, Milwaukee, Orlando, and Tulsa, Bob gives audiences a clearer understanding that they are not alone in their battle against cancer, and that there is always hope. Hope to see a child graduate from college. Hope to take that vacation they’ve always wanted. Hope to be free of pain, and that a cure can be found.

He speaks to audiences about their rights–the right not to feel guilty for having cancer, the right to be told the truth by both doctors and family, and the right to decide on our own medical protocol in our battle with cancer. He tells the audience to involve themselves in spreading the true facts, not myths, about cancer. He encourages them to reach out to rural areas where many with cancer are waiting alone, afraid to tell their loved ones of their fears, and afraid to seek help.

Bob uses the examples of General Norman Schwartzkopf and singer Harry Belafonte, two survivors of prostate cancer, and actor Robert Urich and Bob’s National Speakers Association colleague Reva Lee, who fought valiantly against great odds, and claimed their rightful dignity in the face of death.

There is the story of Don Harrison, Bob’s colleague in broadcasting and former CNN Headline News anchor, who showed what courage was all about in 1990 when he refused to read an erroneous story that President George Bush Sr. was dead. Don had battled cancer twice before, losing a leg to its ravages at age 13, but he showed what the courage of a true journalist is all about that day in 1990. His death in 1998 after battling cancer three times will never be forgotten by those who had the honor to work with him or view his work on CNN Headline News.

Bob lets his audience into his deepest thoughts on cancer, and how he felt as he lay in a hospital bed late at night after numerous surgeries and chemotherapy in 1985, watching his permanent replacements in his former anchor chair at the CBS affiliate in Tulsa. He recounts how his faith in God, and the help of many people he had never even had the chance to meet in person, got him back on the road to win the battle against cancer. That victory not only gave him a different outlook on life, it motivated him to step outside his comfort zone and reach for the stars-in this case, a highly-coveted job anchoring for CNN Headline News in Atlanta.

Bob has appeared in numerous corporate image videos. Among his clients: Bell South, ESPN, Delta Airlines, Wal-Mart, Siemens, Ideal Health, Pentabasol, Bayer Pharmaceuticals, IBM/Worldbook, JCB Inc. of London, England; Management Recruiters, and UCC TotalHome.

From age 22 when he took a giant step into radio anchoring and reporting at the legendary CKLW radio in Detroit, to TV reporting and anchoring for 10 years at CBS affiliate KOTV in Tulsa, Bob was in the trenches when major events unfolded.

In 1995 he was inducted into the Broadcasting Hall of Fame at The University of Tulsa, which followed his 1992 induction as a Distinguished Alumni of the school. He also has the distinction of joining ABC Anchor Ted Koppel as a member of ‘The Order of West Range’, the highest alumni honor given by Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity. He was inducted into PiKA’s Gamma Upsilon Chapter "Hall of Fame" in 2005.