Veteran KFMB Newscaster : Phil Stewart Still Sending Out the Right Signals to Listeners

In his more than 30 years as a newscaster on radio station KFMB-AM (760), Phil Stewart has provided a generation of San Diegans with enough memorable broadcasts to fill a book.

Even so, he said, some stand out more than others.

There was the hot November day in 1963 when John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas. Stewart happened to be interviewing Mayor Charles Dail at the end of Dail’s term when the mayor’s secretary came in and told them she had heard that the president had been shot.

“I phoned in the report to the station, interrupting the regular broadcast,” Stewart said, “then quickly taped Mayor Dail’s reaction, which I rushed down to the station in time for the noon newscast.”

A decade and a half later, Stewart surveyed the grisly scene in North Park just minutes after the fiery crash of a PSA jet.

“It was like nothing I had ever covered before,” Stewart said. “In the news business, we were used to homicides or fatal auto accidents, but to see all these bodies strewn about a quiet residential neighborhood, and to have a hometown airline involved, was just unthinkable.”

Stewart, 60, attributes his broadcast longevity--he’s one of only a handful of San Diego deejays from the 1950s and early ‘60s who are still on the air today--to the fact that in radio, unlike in television, age doesn’t matter.

“Television is basically a young person’s medium, and demographic studies show that a majority of the buying public wants to see young faces,” Stewart said.

“As a result, there aren’t very many old folk reading the news on TV. But in radio, you’re judged by your voice rather than your face. And as long as your voice holds up, you’ve got a job.”

Since he first joined the KFMB news staff in December, 1956, Stewart’s voice hasn’t changed much at all. It’s still a husky baritone shaded by the terse intonations of broadcasting pioneer Edward R. Murrow and the authoritative delivery of Walter Cronkite.

But while the voice hasn’t changed, the job of newscaster certainly has, Stewart says.

“It used to be a lot harder than it is today, with cellular telephones giving you a direct link to the station,” he said. “In the early days, when you went out to cover a story, you had to get to the nearest phone to file your report.

“Later, you had two-way radios, but they weren’t very advanced; they could only transmit over lines of sight, and San Diego isn’t very flat. So if a story was developing, like a murder in a canyon, you had to drive to high ground to file your report and then drive back to the scene for more information.”

There was also a lot less competition, Stewart said.

“When I started, there was only one radio station and one television station in San Diego with a news team, and for years, the entire KFMB news department consisted of just three reporters,” he said.

“Today, our department consists of 13 reporters, and practically every radio and TV station in town has its own news team. So it’s a lot harder to break a story.”

Born in Los Angeles, Stewart spent 18 months in the Navy during World War II and later studied broadcasting under the GI Bill. He landed his first on-air job in 1949, reading the news each day on a radio station in Norfolk, Va.

“I’ve always been a curious person,” Stewart said. “And I quickly found that as a news reporter, you have a right to be curious. Otherwise, you’re a rubber-necker.”

A short time later, Stewart returned west to work as a radio newscaster in Las Vegas and San Bernardino before joining KFMB in 1956. From 1960 until 1972, he was news director. Since then, he’s been a field reporter and fill-in anchor each weekday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

“I really can’t see myself doing anything else,” Stewart said. “You get to be my age and retirement isn’t that far down the road, but I try not to think about it. The only thing that could speed up my retirement plans would be winning the state lottery. But even then, I’d probably be tempted to hang in there.”