TV Talk: Stacy Smith prepares to sign off from KDKA-TV on his terms

For KDKA-TV news anchor Stacy Smith, the decision to retire was less about his age, 72, than about hitting a milestone.

Now in his 50th year as a full-time broadcaster, Smith reached his five-decade goal.

“I really feel like I could go on another five or 10 years,” Smith said earlier this month. “So that begs the question, ‘Why are you leaving the anchor desk?’ I think it’s also because I have done it for 50 years, and I think it’s time for me to look at some other endeavors at this point.”

Smith said he reached that decision on his own.

“You know, it’s a beautiful, sunny day right now, and I’d like to take advantage of some of these days,” Smith said.

Smith’s final KDKA broadcast will be the 6 p.m. news Wednesday.

Smith has stayed in touch with his longest-tenured co-anchor, Patrice King Brown, who retired from KDKA in 2011 and now resides in Southern California.

“Stacy sent me the most wonderful letter to announce his retirement. Had me in tears,” King Brown said earlier this month. “It was about our friendship over the years. He was always, always such a gentleman, and I used to tease him and I called him ‘Pittsburgh’s dean of news.’ ”

She may have been teasing, but that moniker really does fit Smith, a reliably unflappable news anchor who walked viewers through crises with a sense of calm even on the darkest news days.

“There’s no question he was a news man,” King Brown said. “It wasn’t just, ‘I’m on television,’ he was about the news and writing it and delivering it and being credible.”

Born in Shreveport, La., and raised in Anderson, Ind., Smith started in broadcasting on the radio then TV stints in Louisville and Kansas City before coming to Pittsburgh.

“When I made the move over to television in 1975 or ’76, we were still using film, and the capability of going live was just coming into news stations,” Smith recalled. “Now, you can go live from just about anywhere, and you add to that technologically now you can stream it on CBSN or some other streaming service so you’re not interrupting soap operas and getting nasty calls because you’ve interrupted the soap opera.”

As for career highlights, Smith says one story doesn’t overpower the others, from political conventions he’s covered to breaking news. But another category that stands out are the stories of people and how they lead their lives.

He recalled a story from his early days in TV when a downtown Louisville hotel that had been turned into low-income housing was slated for demolition. Smith interviewed a one-legged, older gentleman who spoke about how he would miss his one-room apartment and friends in the building. Smith asked what happened to the man’s missing leg.

“He looked at me,” Smith recalled, “tears started to well up in his eyes and he said, ‘I lost my leg in Korea and I came home, my wife left me and she took my daughter,’ and he just broke down and said, ‘I hate this goddamned place.’”

It was 1976 and profanity of that sort wasn’t commonplace on TV but Smith’s news director allowed the interview to air.

“The personal stories are so touching. … It was just a powerful story,” Smith said. “Those are the kinds of stories that also ring true with me.”

Smith arrived at KDKA on July 4, 1983, and although at the time he was not someone with, to quote a former KDKA slogan, “the hometown advantage,” he immediately felt comfortable in Western Pennsylvania.

“People welcomed me, and I continued to feel that welcome through the years here,” he said. “You get to love a community, and I’ve been blessed the community has liked me back.”

Smith’s departure from KDKA follows a raft of other farewells, including last year’s layoffs of mainstays Susan Koeppen and Rick Dayton as well as the departures of station veterans Harold Hayes, Ralph Ianotti, Brenda Waters and the upcoming retirements of Dr. Maria Simbra and Paul Martino.

“So much has changed in the industry, I even believe for the motivation sometimes people go into this business,” King Brown said. “When we were in it — and I’m not trying to be super-critical, it’s just extremely different— you wanted to be the best news person you can be, you want to be the most credible person you can be, and I know it makes me sound like an old, complaining woman, but I think a lot of the younger people go into it because they want to be on TV. The motivation is different, so the delivery is different, so the work that they do is different, and the research they do is also different.”

King Brown mostly sees Los Angeles news today, and while she agrees Pittsburgh TV news viewers have it better than viewers in some larger TV markets, she thinks Smith’s retirement will be felt locally.

“It will create quite a large hole in the news delivery and the information available to viewers,” she said.

Smith said he’ll most miss being on the anchor desk sharing the news of the day with viewers (“it’s a responsibility I don’t take lightly”) and anchoring breaking news coverage, which he calls “the true test of an anchor.” Now, he’s looking forward to “coming home and having dinner before 8 o’clock at night.”

As for what might come next, Smith isn’t sure. He’s worked with WQED-TV before, hosting “On Q” for eight years, and he’s intrigued by the work that’s happening in the streaming space.

“I was given the gift of a voice that got me into broadcasting, and I don’t necessarily want to give up on using that voice,” he said. “I hope to do something. Having said that, I have absolutely no exact plans at all.”

He’s not particularly interested in voicing commercials (“Having said that, if they’re gonna pay me a million dollars, I’ll do a commercial”) but he does have an interest in other voiceover and on-camera work.

“The medium is changing constantly, and there’s this streaming thing we do at CBSN,” Smith said. “I have nothing in the works, no concrete plans, just some random thoughts about trying to do something in that (streaming) area because that’s where it’s going or has gone.”