Ken Sutcliffe

Ken Sutcliffe (born 15 November 1947) is an Australian retired sporting journalist and radio and television personality, known for his association with the Nine Network.

Early life and career

Sutcliffe was born in Oberon, New South Wales and grew up in Mudgee where he started his radio career in 1966, followed by a stint as a general announcer at 2LF Young, and began work on television as a newsreader on local station CBN-8 Orange. He joined TNQ-7 in Townsville during the mid-1970s

He made his television debut in 1982, hosting Bedtime stories with Ken and Daz alongside cohost Darrell Eastlake. The show only lasted 8 episodes.

Career Sutcliffe first joined the Nine Network in 1979 at station TCN9-Sydney, appearing in World of Sport with Ron Casey and became the main sports presenter on the Nine Network TCN-9 Sydney's evening news in 1988 following the departure of Mike Gibson to Network Ten. and remained in that role until his retirement and final Nine News sports report on 8 December 2016.

Sutcliffe was a long-time host of the Nine Network's Wide World of Sports productions, initially joining the programme in 1982. After a year as a co-host on Graham Kennedy's late night news programme in 1988, he rejoined WWOS as host in 1989.

During his time with Wide World of Sports and Nine News, Sutcliffe hosted coverage of and reported on the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles (1984) and London (2012), the America's Cup defence in Fremantle (1987), and the Winter Olympics in Calgary (1988), Albertville (1992), Lillehammer (1994) and Vancouver (2010).

Awards and honours

In 2014, he was awarded Australian Sports Commission Media Award for Lifetime Achievement

Sutcliffe was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in the 2019 Queen's Birthday Honours for "service to the broadcast media, particularly to television".

Other media Sutcliffe published a book of memoirs in 2009, The Wide World of Ken Sutcliffe.

He was a featured character in The Twelfth Man's comedy productions, with the story-line being that he was the most handsome of the WWOS and Commentary Team presenters — the "male model from Mudgee", sighed over by the wives of Richie Benaud and Max Walker. Sutcliffe (his main rival) is kidnapped by Walker as the latter tries to rejoin the Commentary Team. The only voice Billy Birmingham did not do himself was that of Sutcliffe — it was Sutcliffe himself who voiced his character.