R.I.P.: Radio/TV Broadcaster Steve Porter

Steve Porter

A veteran Radio/TV journalist, who spent nearly 50-years covering news stories, Stephen Gregory (Steve) Porter passed away on Friday at Grand Strand Regional Medical Center in Myrtle Beach, SC., where he had undergone heart surgery last Tuesday.

He was 73 year old according to wbtw.com.

Porter began at WFLA Radio/TV in Tampa while attending St. Petersburg Junior College, during which time he was active in the start-up of a local educational TV station.

At nineteen, while attending the University of Miami he began a full-time position with Storer Broadcasting's flagship station, WGBS, where he anchored "Radio Miami", the four-hour afternoon drive news program.

His career began to take off as he worked starting news departments and anchoring for several Florida radio stations, including  WINZ. He took a job in 1964 with KONO-TV in San Antonio, where he had his first contact with presidential politics, freelancing for ABC at the ranch of President Johnson.

Over the following years, Steve worked for Group W in Philadelphia before moving to the largest radio news market in the nation, New York City. There he was the first voice heard on WCBS 880 AM in their new, all-news radio format. He worked in NYC for sixteen years for WCBS and then NBC before he got the assignment he always wanted in Washington, as NBC Radio correspondent for the Pentagon, State Department, Capitol Hill, and finally at the White House.

On television, he was seen regularly on the NBC News “Sunrise” program that precedes the “TODAY” program, and he also provided reports for “TODAY” and for “NBC Nightly News.” He was a major contributor of syndication coverage for NBC News affiliates and syndication customers. In addition, he was the primary White House correspondent for the NBC Radio Network

He spent nine years in the White House Press Corps during the Reagan and Bush administrations, traveling with both presidents on Air Force One, and won the Headliner Award for his coverage of the first Reagan/ Gorbachev Moscow Summit.

.In 1992, after personal tragedy, the deaths from cancer, of his first wife, Rita, and their son, Scott, forced him to leave Washington, Steve settled in Myrtle Beach, where he and Rita had planned to retire. He purchased a share in N/T WRNN 99.5 FM and became host of the morning show on New Year's Day 1995.

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