. . . WHILE RAY HAS BEEN AROUND FOR 33

Ray Wilson will tell you that two careers in front of the television cameras are better than one--especially if you want to keep your mug on the tube for more than three decades, as he has done.

Wilson began his first on-camera career in 1953 as the straight-faced anchorman of San Diego’s first nightly half-hour newscast, on KFMB-TV (Channel 8).

Over the next 20 years, he told his viewers about Sputnik and Gemini, about the assassination of one president and the possible impeachment of another, about civil rights and Vietnam, and about the first man to die in space and the first man to walk on the moon.

After a stint behind the scenes as Channel 8 news director, Wilson began his second career in front of the camera in 1985 as Larry Himmel’s comic sidekick on “San Diego at Large.”

Since then, he has appeared on screen as a cowboy, an Arab sheik, a punk rocker and a wino; he has been filmed driving around town with two voluptuous redheads; he has rattled off one-liners from a corner booth in Ray’s Place; he has introduced Bullwinkle cartoons and old “King of the Texas Rangers” serials.

An unlikely role change for one of this town’s pioneering TV newscasters? Not really, said Wilson, now 68.

“Everybody in the news business has to have a little bit of show business in his blood,” he said one morning shortly before a filming of “At Large.”

“I know that’s not a popular viewpoint with tried-and-true journalists. But if you’re a TV anchorman, you also have to be a performer; you have to generate enthusiasm when you report a story.

“If you fail to generate that enthusiasm, you lose your audience.”

Wilson’s current on-camera persona may lean more toward the show-biz side, but in other ways he hasn’t changed much from the days when he was reading the news.

He’s still got the same combed-back black hair, the same chipmunk cheeks and the same pair of darting gray eyes. He wears the same horn-rim glasses he has worn for 33 years, and he still furrows his left eyebrow when he’s making a point.

Moreover, in a day when newscasters have become the nomads of the television industry, Wilson has spent nearly half his life in the same city--and on the same station.

“I guess it’s because whenever something’s changed,” he said, “I was able to change right along with it.”

Like most veterans of television’s early days, Wilson began his broadcast career in radio. His first job was as a dramatic actor on a Berkeley station in 1939.

A short time later, he moved to Denver and became a news announcer. His most vivid recollection is the December day in 1941 when he almost missed reporting the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

“In those days, radio was live, and we were in the studio doing a commercial with the owner of a furniture store,” Wilson said. “When the first announcement of the attack came over the wire, we were so busy we didn’t notice it.

“After a while, though, more reports came in and someone happened to see one of them. So we immediately sent the furniture guy home, and I grabbed the microphone and started reading right off the wire.”

Within a few months, Wilson had joined the Army. But by 1947, he was back on the air, this time in Salinas, Calif. In 1952, he was hired by radio station KFMB-AM (760) in San Diego; a year later, he moved over to KFMB’s fledgling television operation.

Again, what he remembers best from his 20-year career as Channel 8 anchorman is another news item he nearly passed over: the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

“We had just gone off the air with our midday newscast when the first wire report came in,” Wilson said. “It didn’t sink in right away; I thought the wire service had made some mistake.

“But then our regular programming was interrupted by a special flash from Walter Cronkite and the CBS network news. And as soon as we realized the wire report had, in fact, been accurate, we began breaking in with local reports.

“I did live interviews with Bishop Buddy and other prominent San Diegans who had known the President, and (reporter) Harold Keen went out on the street for other reactions.”

Wilson’s anchorman duties ended in 1973. “There was a groundswell of opinion that anchormen should all be young, that they should look a certain way, and read the news a certain way,” Wilson said. “And since I was getting on in years, I didn’t fit in with that image.”

For the first time in 20 years, Wilson went to work behind the scenes--as news director, a position he still holds today.

But when “San Diego at Large” producers offered to make him part of the weeknight comedy hour’s cast in January, 1985, Wilson didn’t think twice before accepting.

“At first, a lot of people thought it was demeaning,” Wilson said. “Senior citizens, especially, would come up to me and say, ‘Mr. Wilson, you used to do the news. How can you do a comedy show?’

“But after 12 years of being off the air, I like being back on, no matter what my role is. People are again stopping me on the street and telling me they recognize me.

“Even the Cub Scouts who come through the station on tours--they weren’t born when I was reading the news, but now they all know me as the friend of Bullwinkle.”

Dan Arden, producer of “San Diego at Large,” said, “The great thing about Ray is he always gets everything on one take. He’s been in front of the camera so long that he always knows what to do.

“He’s a father figure, and he exudes a certain amount of friendliness and sincerity.

“He’s almost the opposite of Larry, which is good. Larry is wild and crazy and gets picked on, . . . but Ray is the one everyone likes.”