CNN sportscaster Nick Charles has died, the Atlanta-based network reported Saturday.
The broadcaster died in Santa Fe, N.M., after battling bladder cancer since 2009, the network said. He was 64.
Charles had been with the network from its beginning on June 1, 1980.
"Nick was your friend from the moment you met him -- and he stayed your friend forever," said Rick Davis, CNN's executive vice president of News Standards and Practices. "All of us who had the very good fortune to have been his friend have so much to remember about how he touched our lives in his own special way."
Charles worked in local television and radio in Springfield, Ill., and the Baltimore-Washington area before joining CNN in 1980. For two decades Charles worked with Fred Hickman on "Sports Tonight." In 2001, began calling fights for Showtime as part of its ShoBox series.
He is a three-time winner of Cable Ace awards for his work on “Sports Tonight”; 2008 winner of International Boxing Hall of Fame’s Sam Taub Award for excellence in broadcast journalism.
In an interview last year with AJC sports writer Steve Hummer, Charles shared his operating formula: “Life is 20 percent what happens to you, 80 percent how you react to it.”
CNN said Charles is survived by his wife, Cory, and their daughter, Giovanna. He has three children from two previous marriages: Jason, 39; Melissa, 36; and Katie, 24.
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