WRAL fixture turns the channel

Despite a shaky start in '71, Tom Suiter went on to become a TV icon in the Triangle

Thirty-seven years ago, Tom Suiter figured he would not last long on television.

His career at WRAL was just nine days old, but in his mind, it was over.

He had been so nervous, so script-dependent in a taped interview with John Wooden that the famed UCLA basketball coach calmed him down and told him to have a conversation. Suiter also struggled in his first live interview on June 11, 1971. He filled a planned four-minute segment for that day's noon telecast with only 90 seconds of Q&A before shrugging at the cameras as if to say, "That's all I've got."

Suiter remembers it was a Friday -- he can recall dates for seemingly mundane events -- when he substituted for veteran anchor Ray Reeve and couldn't fill that segment. Hired with no TV experience, he was still commuting from his hometown.

"It was a glum ride back to Rocky Mount," he recalled. "I'm thinking they're going to fire me."

Two days ago, still driven by that edgy fear of failure, Suiter prepared to fill 3 minutes and 20 seconds. He checked facts, made sure the highlight tapes were in order and tinkered with scripts. They were typed in all caps, fitting for Suiter, who has perfected a high-volume, all-caps sort of delivery.

There will be no more opportunities to holler "JAMBURGER!" or announce, "LET'S GO TO THE VIDEOTAPE." When Suiter, WRAL's main sports anchor since 1981, signed off the 6 p.m. newscast Thursday -- it was for the last time.

For 15 years, before widespread cable TV coverage and Internet video emerged, Suiter was this market's main supplier of same-day sports news. Outside of coaches' shows, he was the Triangle's chief supplier of game highlights.

Growing up in Oxford and then while studying at N.C. State, Jeff Gravley picked up his sports news from the man he is now succeeding on WRAL's 6 p.m. broadcast.

"As soon as the games were over, we would click on Tom at 6:20 or 11:20 to get his take," said Gravley, also WRAL's 11 p.m. sports anchor. "We knew they'd take us inside the locker room."

Suiter could make a Pop Warner game sound like the Super Bowl, sticking to the local and staying upbeat. He believed in focusing on the community and immersing himself in it. He once spoke at 29 events in a month in the late 1980s, when a voice problem nearly ended his career.

Doctors called it incipient adductor spasmodic dysphonia. Essentially, Suiter's motor mouth, combined with his tendency not to relax while talking, tightened his vocal cords and damaged his larynx so much that he took a year off from full-time anchoring. Now, at 60, Suiter said he felt some of his trademark enthusiasm waning. Driving to work each day, after 37 years, felt like a grind.

He is stepping aside from what Capitol Broadcasting CEO Jim Goodmon called the "tyranny of television."

"There's a certain hold that this has on you, that you have to do it five nights a week, 6 o'clock, be ready," Goodmon said. "I think he deserves the freedom."

In the fall, Suiter plans to continue hosting the "Football Friday" show devoted to high school games, in addition to radio and Internet contributions for Capitol Broadcasting. He had hoped to walk off the set quietly Thursday, without any special attention. He's not a hoopla guy -- the same way Mike Krzyzewski is not a zone-defense guy and Roy Williams is not a Pepsi guy.

But most of the Thursday broadcast was Suiter-centric. The weather segment was trimmed, and commercial breaks were preceded by taped messages from Krzyzewski, Williams and other prominent figures wishing Suiter well.

The telecast included an extended montage of Suiter sports moments compiled by Bob Holliday, his longtime colleague. Tears welled in Suiter's eyes as he watched the clips from his cubicle, as a string of appreciative e-mail from viewers and other well-wishers filled his computer screen.

He had just a few minutes to pull himself together, finish applying his makeup and read his script aloud once more before going on air.

A crowd milled about the newsroom watching another taped message, from one of Suiter's preteen baseball teammates. In the message, Gov. Mike Easley talked about how he and Suiter, who played for a team sponsored by the Rocky Mount Elks Lodge in the early 1960s, were taking their leave together. Easley's tribute included presenting Suiter with the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, the state's highest civilian honor.

The sportscast flowed normally, with no news from outside the viewing area: Tyler Hansbrough's pursuit of the UNC scoring record led recaps of Duke's and N.C. State's basketball wins the previous night, followed by a feature on high school football and a sentence about the Carolina Hurricanes.

Only then did the family reunion begin, with Suiter the unassuming, unofficial patriarch.

"I'm going to miss being in our office every day and laughing," he said. "Putting together 'Football Friday'; it's the closest thing to a team that I've been on since I quit playing sports. Putting together that show and everybody [contributing], like news photographers wanting to work on the show, I'll miss that.

"I'm not going to miss being on TV."