Emmy-Award Winning Newscaster Mario Machado Dies

Mario Machado, who earned eight Emmy Awards as a newscaster and TV host in Los Angeles starting in the 1960s, died Friday, friends announced Sunday. He was 78.

Machado died of complications of pneumonia and had lived with Parkinson's disease for some time, his daughter told the Los Angeles Times.

Machado, who played collegiate soccer, called soccer games on CBS and
Spanish-language television, and helped found the AYSO soccer organization, was a strong voice for allowing girls to play in the childrens' organization, which
he helped found, a family friend said.

"Without Mario Machado's strong voice, school girls today would not be
playing AYSO soccer,'' said Barbara Begyud.

Born in Shanghai of Chinese and Portuguese heritage, Machado was called
the first Chinese-American newscaster in the L.A. market. He rose to fame as
the consumer reporter on KNXT's "The Big News,'' the local CBS newscast that
dominated the L.A. TV ratings in the 1970s and pioneered many TV news
techniques that are now broadcast staples.

Machado joined KHJ-TV (now KCAL) in 1967, and was billed as the nation's
first Chinese-American newsman. He jumped to KNXT (now KCBS-TV) in 1969, and hosted the midday interview show, "Noontime."

Machado also hosted an experimental KNXT program called "It Takes All
Kinds,'' and his producer, Joe Saltzman, said it was the first broadcast
portrayal of homosexuals or lesbians as normal people.

"Mario was very easy to work with and appreciative of good writing and production,'' Saltzeman said.

A star collegiate soccer player, Machado was the play-by-play announcer on the CBS Television Network's North American Soccer League telecasts in the late '60s and '70s. He also hosted weekly "Star Soccer'' telecasts on PBS from
England.

In Spanish, he also hosted a weekly soccer roundup on the Spanish International Network (now Univision). He is a member of the AYSO Soccer Hall
of Fame, and helped carry the Olympic flame through Los Angeles in 2004.

After leaving broadcast TV, Machado played newsmen in movies including
Brian's Song, Oh, God!, Airport '79, Scarface and St. Elmo's Fire.

His last big movie was 1997's An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn.

In the recent years, Machado has been gathering oral histories from people who left China after the Communist revolution, and was a co-founder of the "Old China Hands Archives'' at Cal State Northridge.

Machado's wife, the former Marie Christine D'Almada Remedios, died several years ago, Begyud said. But he is survived by their four children: Brian, Michelle, Dennis and Andrea.

No funeral arrangements have been announced.