About Neal
Neal Spelce’s six-decade career has been distinguished by successes in radio, television, journalism, marketing, advertising, public relations, broadcast program syndication, public speaking, and consulting.
During his time as a TV News Director/Anchor, and following, he interviewed, consulted, and/or interacted with presidents Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush and to a lesser extent Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton. He also served as a Senior Advisor to US Sen. John McCain, traveling with the senator’s 2008 campaign for president. He also was a communications consultant to Texas Gov. Ann Richards and New York Gov. Mario Cuomo.
Neal Spelce also was CEO of a company that created, produced, and syndicated An American Moment™ with Charles Kuralt and An American Moment™ with James Earl Jones, the internationally-acclaimed TV news programs that were featured in 100+ US markets. For forty years, he was Editor/Publisher of the weekly Neal Spelce Austin Letter journalistic report.
He received the nation’s top award for radio news reporting from the national Society of Professional Journalists and the National Headliners Club’s highest award for “consistently outstanding television news coverage in the United States.” Over the years, he has been cited for his bravery, and for saving countless lives, while reporting under fire, and in real-time, the then-unimaginable horrors of history’s first mass school shooting from atop the Tower on the University of Texas campus in Austin that left fifteen people dead and thirty-one others wounded.
The holder of three communications degrees from the University of Texas, he was named an Outstanding Alumnus of UT’s College of Communication and was honored when the College permanently named The Neal Spelce Broadcast Journalism Studio in his honor.
He was named Austin’s Most Worthy Citizen for his civic and charitable work. In other business pursuits, he received the nation’s highest award for Public Relations, was accorded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Austin Advertising Federation, and received the Lifetime Trailblazer Award from the American Women in Radio and Television.
He continues as a highly sought-after speaker and consultant while writing his memoirs. His first memoir is With the Bark Off, A Journalist's Memories of LBJ and a Life in the News Media, published by the University of Texas Briscoe Center for American History, with distribution by Tower Books, an imprint of the University of Texas Press.
