An Emmy for a Pioneering Newsman : Television: KTTV’s Bill Welsh has been on the air for 45 years. Saturday he’ll get the Los Angeles Area Governors Award.

The prefix “veteran KTTV commentator” is used so consistently to describe Bill Welsh that it could be an unofficial part of his name. But it’s the license plates on Welsh’s white Oldsmobile sedan that more accurately describe his status-about-town. The plates, which were given to Welsh by his wife after hearing him introduced the same way at countless local dinners, identify him simply as “MR HLLWD.”

Welsh, whose continuing 45-year career in local television will be recognized Saturday night at the Los Angeles Area Emmy Awards ceremony at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, is in the unusual position of being a TV pioneer who is more of a hometown fixture than a national name.

“A few years ago I got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame,” he said. “And they asked me if I wanted to have it up by the Chinese Theater. I said, ‘No, I don’t want 3 to 4 million people coming in from out of town every year and saying, Who’s he ?’ ”

Instead, Welsh chose what he considered a less touristy spot--a block and a half west of Vine Street on Hollywood Boulevard--to immortalize himself on the sidewalk as one of television’s founding fathers.

“When they write the history of Los Angeles television, his name will be one that will be prominently displayed,” said Don Tillman, vice president of programming at KTTV Channel 11, where Welsh has worked since 1951, currently as director of sports and special events.

“Bill’s diversity is unequalled,” Tillman said. “He has done everything”--from announcing more than 60 different types of sports to hosting an early version of “Divorce Court.” In addition to his broadcasting duties, Welsh is president emeritus of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, having served as its president from 1980 to 1990.

It was Welsh’s diversity and energy that prompted Tillman to nominate him for the 1991 Los Angeles Area Governors Emmy Award, given by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences to “individuals, shows or organizations that have made a special and unique contribution” to local television.

Past recipients of the award, which is voted on by the academy’s 50-member board of governors, include KCBS Channel 2 reporter Ruth Ashton Taylor, honorary mayor of Hollywood Johnny Grant and the late newsman Clete Roberts.

Another past award winner, KTLA Channel 5’s Stan Chambers, alternated broadcasting time with Welsh during an incident in 1949, almost 40 years before Jessica McClure riveted viewers by falling down a well in Midland, Tex.

“Stan Chambers and I did 27 1/2 hours live on the air” covering the attempted rescue from a San Marino well of toddler Kathy Fiscus, Welsh recalled. “People had never seen anything like that before in their homes. I got letters from people the likes of which I have never received since.”

The experience illustrated to Welsh the medium’s potential impact, even when Southern California TV sets only numbered in the hundreds. At the time, he said, “My friends told me TV was not going to amount to anything in our lifetimes. A few years later, they were saying, ‘Hey, Bill, how do I get a job in television?’ ”

Welsh’s own introduction to the medium came in 1946, when he announced a hockey game on KTLA. Originally a radio announcer in his hometown of Greeley, Colo., Welsh had come to Los Angeles two years earlier to work at an advertising agency. Eventually, he landed at Channel 11, where, among other duties, he has provided Tournament of Roses Parade commentary every year since 1948--a job that has proven nerve-wracking at times.

“I used to (announce the parade) standing on the sidewalk,” he said. “I shall always remember the Union Oil Co. float of a ship, with the bowsprit sticking out in front, coming around the corner, and not making it. I was in a little fenced-in area with nowhere to go, and there it came. The crowd was yelling ‘Stop! Stop!’ and finally the float driver heard it and stopped. Otherwise, I would have become the world’s biggest shish kebab.”

Such moments, Welsh believes, are “about as exciting a part of television as there is. That’s the challenge of live television.”

He regrets that live television is mostly a thing of the past. “TV is very structured now. Everything is scripted and rehearsed. The spontaneity of the thing has pretty much disappeared.”