Former WINK News Chief Meteorologist Matt Devitt has been in the headlines a lot lately after his separation from the station. In addition to his time on TV, Devitt’s huge social media following helped with his local celebrity status.
While Devitt’s future remains unknown, a lot of television personalities left quite an impression in the Southwest Florida TV market and went on to bigger and better things.
Here are just a few.
SHEPHERD SMITH VS. HODA KOTB
According to a Sept 30, 2020, article in ADWEEK, Shepherd Smith (NNBC and Fox News) and former “Today” show host Hoda Kotb went “toe-to-toe” in the Fort Myers market.
It was the late 1980s, Smith worked for NBC affiliate WBBH and Kotb worked for CBS affiliate WINK. Both primarily covered crime.
“The two were competitors back then, but respected one another’s reporting, and knew exactly when the other was on a big story,” the article reads. “In fact, their respective news directors called them out if one failed to beat the other.”
KERRY SANDERS
Kerry Sanders is most famously known as a broadcast journalist for NBC (from 1991 until his retirement in 2023).
A 1982 graduate of the University of South Florida, Sanders worked at a number of Florida stations – including Jacksonville, Tampa and Miami. Most notably for us, he worked at WINK starting in 1983.
Sanders later made a name for himself covering the ValuJet Flight 592 crash into the Everglades (May 11, 1996).
CRAIG SAGER
Craig Sager was a well-known sportscaster for CNN and its sister stations TBS and TNT, from 1981 until his death in late 2016.
Sager was a 2016 inductee of the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame. During the 2017 NBA All-Star Game, he was named the recipient of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame Curt Gowdy Media Award.
Sager began his career in the mid-1970s as the sports director for WINK. He is remembered for his “energetic” broadcasting style.
WILLARD SCOTT AND SANIBEL
NBC weatherman Willard Scott (1934–2021) was a longtime winter resident of Sanibel, frequently visiting from 1988 until 2021. He was a regular at the Lighthouse Café and had a home on Captiva Island.
He’s best known for wishing viewers a happy birthday when they were 100 or more years old.
FRANK NODINE, THE ‘VOICE OF FORT MYERS’
Frank Nodine was perhaps the first local television celebrity. For 30 years, Nodine was the voice of Fort Myers. He was also the topic of a July 15, 2017, article in the News-Press by Cynthia A. Williams
“When WINK-TV went on air for the first time in 1954, the face that appeared on the small screens of the few television sets in Fort Myers was that of WINK’s first announcer, Frank Nodine,” Williams writes.
Nodine remained at WINK for nearly two decades as a sports announcer, live-show host, program director, administrative assistant and finally as station manager and vice president.
“Then, after an absence of four years, he would return, first as an evening, weekend sports announcer on WINK-TV and then as the early morning deejay for WINK-AM. In other words, there is little, if anything, that Frank Nodine did not do over the roughly 30 years of his career in radio and television in Fort Myers.
“A frequent speaker at local clubs and the master of ceremonies at local events, Nodine became something of a celebrity in the small town he had made so thoroughly his home. He retired in 1984 and died 12 years later at the age of 71.”
Read all about his impressive life at the link on this page.
Sources: Wikipedia, ADWEEK, The News-Press and the Naples Daily News.
Journalist and author Hoda Kotb
Kerry Sanders is most famously known as a broadcast journalist for NBC (from 1991 until his retirement in 2023).
This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Archives: TV news, weather celebs who passed through Southwest Florida