Biography

One of two people to have a lifetime contract with NBC. The other was Bob Hope.

He semi-retired in 2004 (he could never fully retire, since he had the last remaining NBC lifetime contract), and moved to Tucson, Arizona. But, Saturday Night Live (1975) (SNL) producers convinced him to continue announcing for the show. Thereafter, for every new SNL episode, Pardo was flown from his Tucson home to New York City. In the time since 2004, for a few episodes, SNL producers allowed him to tape announcements from his home. But the producers had a strongly expressed preference to have him in the SNL studio to warm-up the audience and insisted he come to the SNL studio for each new live SNL to announce.

As a staff announcer at NBC on November 22, 1963, he read the first account of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in a voiceover on the NBC Television Network.

Jimmy Fallon said "Nothing compares to the moment Don Pardo says your name." Maya Rudolph expressed a similar sentiment, "The moment you said my name was the height of my career".

Has been the announcer for Saturday Night Live (1975) for every season except the seventh. Thus, he was the person that's been involved with the show for the longest, even longer than executive producer Lorne Michaels who left the show from 1980-1985.