Peter Storer, a onetime executive at WSPD television who became chief executive of the pioneering broadcast firm founded in Toledo by his father, died Sunday in his Saratoga, Wyo., home from complications of cardiovascular and pulmonary disease. He was 81.

A Toledo native, Mr. Storer was appointed managing director of WSPD-TV - now WTVG-TV, Channel 13 - in January, 1959, by station vice president Allen L. Haid.

By then, Mr. Storer had held various jobs for stations in Detroit, New York, Birmingham, Ala., Atlanta, Miami, and Cleveland, all part of Storer Broadcasting Co., headed by his father, George B. Storer. He'd also worked for CBS Radio.

"I remember him well," said Frank Venner, longtime news anchor for WSPD-TV. "I thought he was a very interesting guy. I think he was a good administrator. He was a very, very good manager.

"He had a good presence of mind," said Mr. Venner, who began at WSPD in 1949. "He had learned so much of the broadcasting field from his father, George, Sr., and was a remarkable guy in terms of the open-door policy. Anybody could come in his office and see him. He didn't play high-hat, although he certainly could have because, of course, the Storer name was large."

Wherever he lived or worked, Toledo was his home base, his son, Peter, Jr., said, and he visited the Toledo stations periodically when he ran Storer.

"It's where the company started, and he was born there," his son said. "He always had a fond memory of Toledo and the time we spent there."

Storer Broadcasting - at first, the Fort Industry Co. - grew out of his father's purchase in 1927 of a low-watt radio station, WTAL. The call letters were changed to WSPD, because the family sold Speedene gasoline at their service stations, and the wattage was boosted.

Storer holdings later included WJBK radio and, later, television, in Detroit and, at the time of the elder Mr. Storer's death in 1975, stations in Atlanta, Milwaukee, Cleveland, San Diego, Boston, Los Angeles, Miami - the firm's headquarters city for years - and New York City.

WSPD-TV went on the air in 1948, the first television station in Toledo.

Mr. Storer spent his earliest years on Robinwood Avenue in the Old West End. The family later moved to Bloomfield Hills, Mich. Because he lived nearby, he attended school at Cranbrook, but not did not board there. He attended the University of Michigan and was a graduate of the University of Miami.

In 1960, Mr. Storer moved to New York and started Storer Television Sales, which worked to persuade national advertisers to buy ads on any combination of Storer stations.

In 1967, he became Storer Broadcasting executive vice president. He was named CEO after his father died and, eventually, chairman. He emphasized expansion, especially into cable television. The firm eventually held cable franchises with more than 500 communities in eight states and became Storer Communications. "He was very proud of the legacy that his father had turned over to him," his son said.

Mr. Storer was a former board member of the National Association of Broadcasters and was in a television management hall of fame. He retired after a leveraged buyout of the firm in 1986 by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. Storer then was the nation's fourth-largest multiple system cable operator with stock valued at $2 billion.

He was disappointed that the firm his father founded had been sold. "But he focused his energy in philanthropy," his son said. He became involved in the George B. Storer Foundation, which contributes to the YMCA Storer Camps, named for his grandfather, among other nonprofit causes.

He enjoyed fly-fishing and liked the West and the outdoors. His father had a Wyoming ranch for years, and he was a founding board member of the Wyoming Community Foundation and the Wyoming chapter of the Nature Conservancy. He was on the national board of Trout Unlimited.

"His wife, Ginny, was born in Miami and raised on the Keys and was an avid outdoorswoman," their son said. "The two of them, frankly, preferred to be out and about than in a corporate setting. They could have lived anywhere, but they chose to come back to his roots here in Saratoga and also had a house for years at Islamorada in the Keys."

He married the former Virginia "Ginny" Parker Oct. 19, 1951. She died Sept. 2, 2007.

Surviving are his son; Peter, Jr.; daughters, Leslie Smith, Elizabeth Storer, and Linda Anderson; brothers, Jim and Robert Storer; four granddaughters, and four stepgrandchildren.

Services will be at 3:30 p.m. Saturday in the Platte Valley Community Center, Saratoga, Wyo.

The family suggests tributes to the Platte Valley Community Center or the Corbett Medical Center, both in Saratoga, Wyo., or Trout Unlimited.

First Published November 12, 2009, 9:47 p.m.