Rich Landrum
Radio and TV broadcaster
Richard Eugene Landrum (March 31, 1946 – August 14, 2023) was an American radio and television broadcaster, who was best known for hosting the syndicated program World Wide Wrestling from late 1978 to early 1982. He started his broadcasting career at the age of 16, while attending Douglas S. Freeman High School in western Henrico County (a Richmond suburb).
Career
Broadcasting
Landrum started his broadcasting career at the age of 16 while still in high school, working part-time as a news reporter for radio station WLEE in Richmond under the mentorship of its vice-president and general manager Harvey Hudson. At that time WLEE was the #1 Top 40 station in Richmond. Landrum stayed with WLEE for four years and moved to WTVR AM, another Richmond radio station. That lasted about a year and he returned to WLEE. During his time with WLEE, Landrum worked with a number of Richmond broadcasters, including Harvey Hudson, Lud Sterling, Jess Duboy, Jim Granger, George Prescott and Bill Adams (the former producer of the Dick Clark Radio Show).
While assistant manager for a Little League Baseball team with Neil Kuvin, the station manager for co-owned WXEX-TV in Petersburg, Kuvin convinced Landrum to move to WXEX-TV. At first, Landrum was not sure he wanted to move to TV, as he really enjoyed the anonymity of radio. Kuvin finally convinced him and Landrum started his TV career as a field reporter and news photographer. Shortly thereafter, in addition to being a field reporter, he hosted the afternoon version of Dialing for Dollars and filled in as a sports presenter on the 6:00 & 11:00 news, when needed.
Professional wrestling
During this time, at the behest of one of his friends, he attended a local professional wrestling match at the State Fair Grounds of Virginia at Strawberry Hill (now Richmond International Raceway).
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 2, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7323331. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1946, 2023, 1978 and 1982.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rich Landrum” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.