Bill Stern (July 1, 1907 – November 19, 1971) was an American actor and sportscaster who announced the nation's first remote sports broadcast and the first telecast of a baseball game.

Born in Rochester, New York, Stern began doing radio play-by-play commentary in 1925, when he was hired by a local station, WHAM, to cover football games.

According to the book Sports on New York Radio[5] by sportscaster and Westwood One executive David J. Halberstam, Stern's remarkable career flourished despite a physical handicap.

He caused a controversy on September 15, 1944, when he reported that a Chicago newspaper had broken word of some sort of arrangement for the St. Louis Browns of baseball's American League to lose their only World Series that year.

One day, while doing radio play-by-play for a football game, as a player broke away towards a long run for a touchdown, Stern misidentified the runner several times as he ran toward the goal.

Noticing the error just before he crossed the goal line, Stern "corrected" himself by saying that the misidentified runner had lateraled the ball to the player who actually made the run and scored.

For years, long after his days of baseball glory were over, Freddy Goldsmith lived happily in the knowledge that posterity would always know him as the inventor of the curve ball.

Most of the program was played for laughs but Stern, with his reporter training, could always be counted on to ask shrewd, probing questions stressing the factual aspects of the show.

According to the Halberstam book, Stern's tenures at both networks were cut short due to health problems caused by his addiction to painkillers, which dated back to the period after his leg had been amputated.

An overheard Bill Stern radio broadcast has brief significance in the 1951, Nero Wolfe detective novel, Murder by the Book, by Rex Stout.