Rob Sweeting, a fixture behind WJXT TV-4’s anchor desk for 30 years, has died. He was 73.
Sweeting died March 20, News4Jax reported.
Anchors Kent Justice, Staci Spanos and Joy Purdy remembered their former colleague during an evening newscast.
“He is remembered for his dedication to this community, to local journalism and he is also remembered for his sense of humor,” Spanos said.
Sweeting, who began his career in broadcast journalism at WPTV TV-5 in West Palm Beach, came to Jacksonville in April 1985, after stops in Tampa, Miami and Atlanta.
Weeks later, he took over the anchor position for the station’s “Eyewitness News at Noon” following the departure of Matt Sinclair, the Times-Union reported at the time. With Sweeting in the role, the noon newscast would later be described as a ratings “juggernaut” by the newspaper’s longtime TV critic Nancy McAlister.
In October 1988, Sweeting’s responsibilities extended to mornings when he joined the anchor desk at “Eyewitness News at Breakfast.” And when WJXT added an extra hour of evening news to its lineup in September 1990, it called on Sweeting to co-anchor “Eyewitness News First at 5,” where he was joined by Deborah Gianoulis, Sam Kouvaris and George Winterling.
The WJXT Channel 4 news team in 2002: Mary Baer (back, left), Sam Kouvaris, Rob Sweeting and George Winterling; Tom Wills (front, left), Deborah Gianoulis.
During his 30 years behind the anchor desk at WJXT, Sweeting delivered some of the day’s biggest news – including the Challenger Disaster in 1986 and the announcement that the NFL had awarded Jacksonville a team in 1993. But he was also a fixture out in the community, moderating panels and political debates, participating in charity events, and serving as a role model for aspiring journalists who wanted to follow in his footsteps.
“I would say if you asked me when I was in even the eighth grade, ninth grade … it’s just something I wanted to do,” Sweeting said in a recorded interview with the Jacksonville Broadcasters Association in 2016 that was shared in the March 20 on-air tribute. “I just enjoyed telling a story to someone they didn’t know that they didn’t know about.”
For Sweeting, who grew up in Miami, Jacksonville was supposed to be a stepping stone, a short stay before moving on to the next media market.
“I was going to be here, I don’t know, three years, two years, get a little experience working for them, and then boom, I’m out of here,” he said in the 2016 interview.
But like some of Jacksonville’s other legendary news anchors, including longtime WJXT colleague Tom Wills, Sweeting stayed, welcomed into Jacksonville homes, for decades.
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Sweeting, along with Wills, Gianoulis, Kouvaris, Winterling and Mary Baer, was part of one of Jacksonville’s legendary TV news teams.
He stepped away from the News4Jax anchor desk in 2015, but continued to fill in for his colleagues for several years.
Tarik Minor succeeded Sweeting in the anchor role.
How Rob Sweeting is being remembered
“I’ll never forget the day [Rob] handed me a new set of collar stays in the newsroom and told me to ‘keep my shirts looking sharp’ on air. No big speech…no fuss…that was just Rob looking out,” Minor wrote in a Facebook post after learning of Sweeting’s death. “… When Rob retired 11 years ago, from WJXT4 The Local Station / News4JAX I assumed his role as evening anchor. But it wasn’t just about the news, it was about the kind, steady leadership that Rob exemplified every day and his unmistakable sense of humor. … He was such a gentle… man. What I’ll remember the most is how he treated people.”
Others, too, remembered Sweeting for his kindness and his sense of humor.
Sweeting “was always there to greet you with a giant smile and a big hug. Heartbreaking to hear he’s passed on, but oh the love, laughs and legacy he left behind,” wrote former News4Jax anchor Nikki Kimbleton in a Facebook post. “He brought joy to every room. I will miss you so very much.”
“There are few people whose memory will make me cry, and laugh,” wrote anchor Joy Purdy. Rob’s “humor was just the right amount of edgy, and carried so many of us through some really tough news days. Somehow … he kept us laughing without ever getting us all called into HR.”
Rob Sweeting: In his own words
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Former News4Jax anchor Rob Sweeting dies at 73