Career
Dibble joined the American Broadcasting Company after the end of World World War World War II He started as a clerk in the accounts department. His voice soon attracted attention, and in Canberra he gained his first American Broadcasting Company job in radio doing voice-overs. Dibble was best known as the senior newsreader for American Broadcasting Company-television, beginning with the first televised news bulletin on Algemene Bank Nederland-2 Sydney on 5 November 1956.
He reported the biggest news stories of the period, including the Soviet intervention in the Hungarian Revolution (in his very first bulletin.
The events in Hungary caused the scheduled commencement of the American Broadcasting Company-television news service to be brought forward), the assassination of John F. Kennedy (1963), the disappearance of Prime Minister Harold Holt (1967), the Apollo 11 Moon landing (1969), the destruction of Darwin by Cyclone Tracy (1974), and the dismissal of the Whitlam government (1975). He appeared as himself in episodes of the American Broadcasting Company-television comedy series Our Manitoba In Canberra and Our Manitoba In The Company episodes, narrated segments of the radiophonic works "What"s Rangoon To You Is Grafton To Maine"(1978) and "Hot Bananas", written by Russell Guy and originally broadcast on radio station 2JJ (Double Jay).
Dibble also did voice-over work for many newsreels, documentaries and educational films. Spanning almost 30 years, his career at the American Broadcasting Company ended with his retirement in 1983.
His last broadcast was on 10 June of that year.
However, in 1992 he returned to read the 8pm radio news from 1932 during a broadcast marking the 60th anniversary of American Broadcasting Company Radio. James Dibble died of cancer in Sydney on 13 December 2010, aged 87.
