NEW ORLEANS -- Ed Marten, who spent more than 15 years in local television as an anchor and “Action Reporter” at two local stations including WWL-TV, died Monday after a lengthy illness. He was 72.
Marten had battled multiple myeloma, a form of bone cancer, for the past two years, according to his wife, Molly.
A native of Galveston, Texas who grew up in the Slidell area, Marten (whose professional name was a shortened version of his given name Martensson) began his broadcasting career in radio in Monroe, Louisiana, before station managers asked him to consider switching to television.
“He came home and said, ‘I know we have two babies and I’d have to take a cut in salary. Can we handle it?’” his wife recalled. “I said, ‘You know what? You should be on TV. You’re a good-looking guy. Go for it.’”
The on-air job in Monroe led to a similar position at a station in Alexandria. In 1968, former WVUE-TV news director Alec Gifford recruited Marten to come to New Orleans, as the station’s “Action Reporter,” part of a news team that at the time included Buddy Diliberto, Richard Angelico, Bob Krieger and others.
In a 1981 New Orleans Magazine profile, Marten said he was the third person to hold the title for the station, responsible for fielding and helping solve consumer and homeowner complaints.
“Not everybody can do it,” Marten told writer Errol Laborde. “I guess it takes a certain type of personality to want to get involved with it at all.”
Marten’s personality helped him establish ownership of the franchise for more than 13 years.
“One personality trait of an Action Reporter may be that of a hunter,” Laborde wrote in the 1981 story. “On camera, Marten has to stalk through the thickness of organizational charts to locate the person responsible for removing abandoned cars or cutting weeds. Spotting his prey, the camera is his weapon.”
Off the air, Marten’s wife said hunting and fishing were very much a part of his life. He was also trained in the sport of falconry, using trained birds of prey to hunt game. His wife said Marten even trained sheriff’s deputies in the sport.
Marten served for a brief time as one of WVUE’s anchors, before jumping to top-rated WWL-TV in 1982, where he continued as the popular “Action Reporter,” a position inherited by Bill Capo after Marten left the station.
As a news reporter, he contributed to coverage of the horrific crash of Pan Am Flight 759 in July 1982. He later became co-anchor of a 4:30 p.m. newscast as well.
Marten left WWL-TV after just two years, to help his wife run the jewelry store she owned in Slidell which bore his name: Ed Marten Jewelry.
“People still come in the store and remember him from TV,” his wife said. “Even when he was very sick, he’d come down and sit in the back of the store, and people would come in and talk about Ed Marten and his TV days."
In addition to his wife, Marten is survived by two sons, a daughter and five grandchildren.
Funeral services will be Friday from 5-7 p.m. at Honaker Funeral Home, 1751 Gause Blvd. West, in Slidell.
