John Schubeck; Longtime TV News Anchor

John Schubeck, well-known anchor of local news programs on network-affiliated Los Angeles television stations for 17 years, died Friday at 61.

Schubeck died of kidney and liver failure at Columbia West Hills Medical Center.

The multifaceted newscaster was a familiar face to Southern California television viewers from 1971, when he signed on with KABC-TV Channel 7, through 1988, when he was fired in a shake-up by KCBS-TV Channel 2.

After beginning his career at KNBC-TV Channel 4, Schubeck briefly worked for WABC-TV in New York before assuming KABC’s anchor chair, which he occupied from 1971 to 1974.

He next anchored the news at KNBC from 1974 until 1983, when he left for KCBS in a dispute with network officials over mixing his news duties with entertainment.

KNBC and network officials refused to renew his contract after Schubeck insisted on permission and backing to produce docudramas for television.

“We just decided that there could be no deal tying a journalist’s work to entertainment activities at NBC,” a vice president of the network told The Times in 1983. TV journalists “can be news guys, or they can be moguls. They can’t do both. Not even in L.A.”

Schubeck said at the time that the real issue was money.

At the time he was fired by KCBS for a younger face in 1988, Schubeck was earning $750,000 a year, a salary that the station paid until the end of his contract in June 1990.

In 1993, Schubeck had a news and commentary program on radio station KIEV-AM (870). His last job, as an anchorman at the NBC affiliate in Palm Desert, KMIR-TV, ended in 1995.

Although he was popular with his audiences, Schubeck was frequently lambasted by critics, Times television commentator Howard Rosenberg among them, for what they called his soft approach to news and lack of hard-hitting reporting.

He was also accused of poor judgment in his comments off the air. In one widely reported incident, Schubeck was accused of appearing to endorse Ronald Reagan for president over Jimmy Carter during a speech to a Burbank service club. The newsman said he merely reported his opinion that Reagan had bested Carter in the presidential debates and was likely to win the election.

A lawyer as well as newscaster, Schubeck also gained a reputation as an amateur golfer. He appeared in many celebrity fund-raising tournaments in Southern California, including one named for him, the John Schubeck Golf Classic at the Desert Horizons Country Club in Indian Wells.