COMMAERNTTARY
Those Were
the Days
By John Wilson
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016
| TAMPA BAY MAGAZINE 139
50th Anniversary of WWII; in Bucharest,
Romania, escorting an adopted child back
to his new parents in Tampa; dodging Fidel
Castro’s agents in Havana; on a U.S. Navy
Destroyer taking part in the blockade of
Haiti; in Moscow broadcasting on then-
Soviet Television; in Panama for the arrest
of Manuel Noriega; soaring through the
air in U.S. Air Force and Navy Jet Fighters;
on a nuclear submarine heading out of
Tampa Bay; and at National Political
Conventions in Detroit, Atlanta and San
Francisco. However, for me, the most
memorable event took place at the Florida
State Prison near Starke, where I witnessed
the execution of serial killer Ted Bundy.
On the other hand, and every good
journalist needs another hand, the most
Iwrote, edited and rewrote almost
every word of my script for the
entire 50 years I was broadcasting
the news. I did it even when I
was live on the air. I kept changing
words and phrases here and there
to make what I was saying clearer
and easier to understand. The sound
of spoken words is often very
different from how they look in print.
The technical directors in the control
room knew I might change my words
at any moment. Therefore, they
chose not to “watch” every word in
my script, but rather scanned it and
“listened” to it, expecting some
spontaneous ad-libbing. I knew when I
could leave my script and when I had to
stay with it. The control room directors
became some of my best friends, so we
depended on each other and became like
family.
One of the negative sides of my long
tenure in radio and TV news was having
to stay in the newsroom most of the time.
So, when the opportunities for out-of-town
travel came, I jumped at them. Often, I
found myself in various parts of the world
that were filled with trouble. I have been
to the White House, where I had lunch
with President Reagan; on the beaches
of Normandy during a celebration of the
exciting and dangerous experience
took place just before my retirement,
when I parachuted out of an airplane
with elite troops from the U.S.
Special Operations Command from
MacDill Air Force Base.
In looking back, perhaps the
most inspiring, if not the most
personally rewarding event of my
long broadcast career, came on my
last day at WTVT Channel 13, when
I turned my anchor chair over to
my son Mark. He had joined us on
the staff at WTVT 18 years earlier,
coming from the NBC station in Raleigh
after launching his own TV news career
many years before in St. Petersburg and
Clearwater. I am still trying to figure out
what “retirement” will mean for me, as I
am still so busy doing such a wide variety
of things. The one constant in my new
schedule is somewhat watching my old
gang on WTVT, at 6 and 10 p.m., as well
as seeing my son Mark in the chair where
I sat for so long. So the world evolves. 9
EDITOR’S NOTE: John Wilson ended
50 plus years of radio and television news
broadcasting with his final goodbye on
WTVT Fox 13 on November 26, 2014, the
day before Thanksgiving.
John Wilson