Dick Cable was an anchor at News10 for 29-1/2 years.
Courtesy
About the time Dick Cable retired from being an anchor for KXTV in June 1998, his retirement party was held in a place that might have seemed unusual: Safetyville, where generations of Sacramento-area children learn the basics of safety.
Cable, who died Wednesday at 89 following an illness, is most known to people in the region for the three decades he spent as an anchor for KXTV, but he was more than that. He was a husband and father of five. He was well-known for his charity work. And, as his wife of 48 years, Berta Gonzales Cable said Thursday, he was Safetyville’s mayor.
“He really admired what they did,” she said.
A giant on Sacramento’s airwaves, Cable belonged to a different era, when people could only turn to a handful of trusted voices for local news. As the response to his death showed, he hadn’t been forgotten.
Who Dick Cable was and how he worked
Born Richard Arnold Cable in New York in June 23, 1936, Cable wasn’t the first journalist in his family. Berta Gonzales Cable said his father, Homer Cable worked for the military publication Stars and Stripes during and after World War II.
Cable became an anchor for News10, then the capital’s CBS affiliate, in January 1969. The early years had happiness, with Cable meeting Berta in 1973 when she interned at KXTV. They married in 1977.
There were some bumps, too. Cable was briefly taken off the 6:30 p.m. newscast in the late 1970s when the station attempted a short-living youth movement before he was reinstated in 1981. Still, he worked hard and, in an industry where egos can rule, did his job with humility.
“I’m not a wilting flower,” Cable told The Bee in 1981. “I have a healthy ego — sometimes maybe an unhealthy one, I don’t know, but the one thing the station has to know is that I toil here.”
Jennifer Smith began working with Cable at KXTV around 1980 and would go on to co-anchor telecasts with him for the better part of two decades. Smith, who now lives in New Orleans, said in a phone interview Thursday that Cable’s personality immediately appealed to her.
“He was so warm and real and no-nonsense and certainly not any kind of how some people view TV anchors as kind of pompous and slick,” Smith said. “He was the opposite of that.”
His approach drew notice from another well-known figure in Sacramento news broadcasting in those days, Stan Atkinson, who died in 2025. “Being a good guy may not carry the weight it once did, but Dick and I came from that old school where credibility was what it’s about,” Atkinson said in a 1988 Bee interview. “He is a good guy and it shows.”
Cable also crossed paths with Sacramento Kings broadcaster Gary Gerould. “He was just thoroughly a professional,” Gerould said in a phone interview Thursday. “I don’t know if people recognized it at the time or not, but there was a very comforting style.”
Cable was known for his community involvement. Traci Rockefeller Cusack worked as a promotion manager at KXTV before carving out a long public relations career in the Sacramento region. She recalled working on a “For Kids’ Sake” coat drive with Cable and a local businessperson that collected 23,000 coats its first year.
“He was just really out and about and his heart was in the community,” she said.
He was also known during his time at KXTV for providing “Cable’s Comment” weekly commentary.
Ultimately, Cable’s capital journalism career was accomplished, with ABC10 President and General Manager Risa Omega noting in a statement that Cable had been honored in 1991 with a Silver Circle award from the Northern California Emmy Chapter. The ABC10 newsroom is also named in Cable’s honor.
“Dick leaves a legacy in this building and in this town,” Omega said.
Dick Cable interviews then-Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1969. Courtesy
Dick Cable on the News10 set in 1991. LEILANI HU Sacramento Bee file Why Cable retired and what he did in retirement
Cable’s retirement was announced in September 1997. He’d dealt with pancreatitis multiple in the preceding years. He greeted his retirement with his trademark humility.
“The future of this station no longer hinges on what I do,” Cable told The Bee in 1997. “I’ve had a wonderful run here.”
He would go on to have a long retirement with many years of good health, Berta said. While he and Berta didn’t have children, he had five from a previous marriage and would ultimately have 10 grandchildren.
He and Berta lived in the Sacramento area in retirement, though they also enjoyed traveling.
“We started putting our toes in the water,” she said. “We went to Mexico a couple of times. We loved going to Hawaii, just the sunshine and the beaches. And then… we wanted to experience Europe, so we took some river cruises through France and Germany.”
She noted that they also traveled to Scotland, England and Italy.
Dick Cable, former Channel 10 anchor, relaxes at home with his dog Ami in 1999. LEILANI HU Sacramento Bee file
He appeared to remain, in his heart, a newsman and was a loyal print subscriber to The Bee. Berta had no problem disclosing her husband’s cause of death, saying he had pneumonia and had trouble breathing. “Dick used to sometimes read the obituaries, he goes, ‘I wonder what they died from?’” she said.
Cusack noted a conversation she’d had since Cable’s passing with Berta. “She said he had had a rough night the night before he died, but he had got up and read the paper,” Cusack said.
Aside from Berta, Cable is survived by a sister Elizabeth Brown, a brother Jonathan Cable and a sister Meredith Cable. He is also survived by his son Richard Cable, daughter Cynthia Davis, son Christopher Cable, son Scott Cable and daughter Margaret Cable.
Memorial arrangements for Cable are pending.
This story was originally published February 26, 2026 at 10:13 AM.
CORRECTION: Due to an editing error, Dick Cable’s birthday was incorrect in a previous version of this story.
Corrected Feb 26, 2026
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Graham Womack is a general assignment reporter for The Sacramento Bee. Prior to joining The Bee full-time in September 2025, he freelanced for the publication for several years. His work has won several California Journalism Awards and spurred state legislation.