Max H. Bice, 86, was a UW graduate and a lifelong ham-radio fanatic, who got his chance to make a career out of his passion in 1948 when the Tacoma News Tribune hired him to design, build, and manage its KTNT radio station (now KBSG). Five years later, the paper obtained the Puget Sound region's second television license. KTNT-TV began as a CBS affiliate, but lost the network shows when KIRO-TV launched in 1958. Under Bice's leadership, the station overcame this initial setback to become one of the country's most successful independents, with highly rated and respected local newscasts and children's shows alongside the regular indie-TV fare of movies, reruns, and syndicated talk shows. Bice and the News Tribune also started Cable TV Puget Sound, the region's first cable system (it was later sold and resold over the years to TelePrompTer, Group W, TCI, AT&T, and most recently to Comcast). He retired as a News Tribune vice president in 1973, around the time the paper sold KTNT-TV (which became KSTW, now a UPN affiliate with no locally produced programming). He continued to work as an electronics consultant in Gig Harbor until last year. Bice died on November 18 from undisclosed causes.

Nate Long, 72, co-founded Seattle Central Community College's film program in 1985. Before that, he ran Oscar Productions, which (starting in 1970) ran private classes in photography, cinematography, and video production; most of his students came from Seattle's Central District and South End. Long's company also made professional TV productions with his student crews. One of these, Action: Inner City, was a weekly talk show that ran on KOMO-TV for 10 years. South by Northwest, a 1975 series Long made for Washington State University, was a dramatized anthology about the region's first black settlers. It (and its 1980 sequel, The Second Time Around) attracted name actors (including Good Times stars Esther Rolle and John Amos), aired on both PBS and commercial stations nationwide, and won national awards. Long also occasionally worked as an assistant director and second-unit director on features, including Truck Turner (starring Isaac Hayes), The Slams (with Jim Brown), the filmed-in-Seattle thriller Scorchy, the Matt Dillon dramas Tex and Over the Edge, and the truck-driver epic White Line Fever (in which Long used his black-belt karate skills as a stuntman). In the '90s he worked as a communications-systems designer at Texas Southern University, gave lectures at campuses around the country, and continued to pursue filmmaking work. Long died in Los Angeles on November 14 from leukemia.

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