He joined NBC in 1971. Starting in 1955, the Pawtucket, R. I., native covered the Cold War, where the post-Stalin Khruschev era was his beat as the first TV correspondent assigned to Moscow.
Next was a 10-year assignment in Rome followed by two years in Tokyo and a year in London. He retired from NBC in 1995 after a quarter-century on the economics beat and now contributes to PBS' Nightly Business Report and lectures at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla.
Covering economics, even more than covering the USSR vs. the United States, made Mr. Levine an enemy of jargon. "There's an enormous temptation to use all the grandiose terms economists use to impress people with their erudition, but I've always made a great effort to stay away from the jargon and use terminology viewers can understand," he said.
The economics assignment gave Mr. Levine a mild-mannered persona, and his trademark bow tie did little to subtract from a Mr. Peepers image.
Once, on a David Letterman Top 10 list asking "How do you know if you're really boring?" No. 4 was : "During sex, your wife calls out the name of Irving R. Levine."
Mr. Levine said he loved it, "but my wife, well, she wasn't as pleased."