Former ABC30 Action News host, one of Fresno’s first female anchors, dies at 78

Nancy Osborne came into Fresno TV news landscape in the late 1970s as one of the city’s female newscasters and, for a generation at least, was the face and voice of one of its best-known news teams.

Osborne died last week at the age of 78. She is survived by her husband and daughter.

Her passing was confirmed in a story by ABC30 on Friday. Osborne was a “trailblazer,” according to the story, “a role model” and “one of the longest-serving anchors in the country to remain at a single station.”

Osborne joined ABC’s Action News team in 1977 and remained on-air at the station until her retirement in 2012, though early on, she did think about moving on to a bigger market.

The Fresno Bee reported as much in a 1982 story. Osborne’s contract was set to expire and while she told The Bee she wasn’t yet packed, she was going to “start exploring Southern California.”

By that time the Fresno State graduate was already an established member of the nightly news team, co-anchoring alongside John Wallace. She also produced and anchored a news-magazine show for the station. It was the first locally produced news-magazine show in the Valley.

In the 1980s and ’90s, she was in a class of well-known female newscasters that included Stefani Booroojian, Liz Harrison, Juanita Stevenson and Janet Stoll-Lee. At that, any respect, even from other media at the time, was hard-earned.

A column in The Bee in 1986 remarked on Osborne’s career nearly a decade on.

The writer praised Osborne’s work, despite his initial skepticism at her hiring.

“There were some pluses,” he wrote of the station’s decision to hire a newscaster whose “news experience was zilch.”

Osborne was already known on TV, only it was from commercials. She had been the on-camera spokeswoman for the Sun Stereo chain of stores in the early 1970s.

“Her background had made her a good communicator. And she was intelligent enough that Channel 30 figured she could learn the rest fast enough,” The Bee columnist wrote. She learned enough to eventually move into management, and in the late 1990s took over for a time as the station’s Executive Producer for special projects.

As a reporter, Osborne covered the gamut of news events. She took a flight with the Blue Angels; was there for the aftermath of the Coalinga earthquake and the first space shuttle landing. She was at President Ronald Reagan’s first inauguration and at Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to Yosemite National Park.

The work won her three Emmy Awards.

Her retirement, at the age of 64, came following an injury that left her unable to do the job up to her own standards.

As she told The Bee at the time: “I decided it wasn’t fair to the station or me to try to go back to work.

“Those who knew me before the fall can tell you it was hard to keep up with me because I was always going full speed. I power walked everywhere and you could hear me in the hallways shouting ‘make a hole’ and they would part for me to go through.

“I only know one way to work and it’s flat out. I didn’t feel like I could do that.”

She attributed the longevity of her career to viewers.

“I never would have lasted 20 minutes, much less 20, 30 years,” she told the news station in 2012.

“It is because of the folks who watched us every day, who listened to us when we called and asked for them to talk with us about something that may be wonderful, happy, unhappy, sad, difficult and opened up their homes and their businesses and their hearts to letting us tell stories that make a difference in the community and enlighten the people around them, and for that, I am absolutely grateful.”

Services for Osborne have not yet been publically announced.

This story was originally published April 13, 2026 at 2:48 PM.