steve.rondinaro@wwaytv3.com
Steve Rondinaro is WWAY’s main anchor and Managing Editor. He joined WWAY in March 2007.
Steve is both a seasoned newsman and businessman. A winner of four Emmy awards, three Telly awards, and a host of other journalism commendations, Steve has also spent front line time in the trenches of small business.
Steve started professionally in radio at age 15 in his hometown of Watkins Glen, NY. He started in television at WENY in Elmira, NY in 1973 during the summer of his freshman year of college, filling in for vacationing anchors. He went into TV news full-time at WROC-TV in Rochester, NY after graduating from the State University of New York at Geneseo in 1976. Steve made a major market jump to Miami, Florida in 1979. He started in the Fort Lauderdale bureau but within six months was co-anchoring the six o’clock news from the Miami studios of WCKT, which soon became WSVN. Steve spent five years at WSVN and two years at WTVJ in Miami, covering the Miami riots, the first space shuttle launch, the Mariel Cuban boatlift, and reporting from Beirut, Lebanon and Israel.
Steve also began hosting a national broadcast on PBS in 1979 and is still at it. He has hosted the Drum Corps International World Championships on PBS, ESPN2, and in movie theatres nationwide via National Cinemedia for 30 years and counting.
Steve continued to cover the space program upon moving to WESH in Orlando, Florida in 1986. In a nine year run as main anchor, he became one of Central Florida’s most respected newsmen. Steve left WESH in 1995 to start Rondinaro Broadcasting Inc. in the North Carolina mountains. RBI bought an AM radio station in Newland, built a brand new FM station from scratch atop Beech Mountain, and then acquired a newstalk station in Blowing Rock. Steve was General Manager and News Director while his wife Tammy ran the traffic and billing part of the operation. Steve also served on the Tar Heel Sports Network
advisory board, learning a thing or two from Woody Durham.
Steve made a one year return to Orlando in 1999 where he anchored and reported news for WFTV. During that stint Steve anchored the station’s live coverage of John Glenn’s historic space shuttle flight and covered the Florida wildfires. Then it was back to the North Carolina mountains to run the radio business.
The Rondinaros sold the radio stations and acquired the High Country’s only local television station, WLNN, better known in those parts as Mountain Television or MTN. After three years of building the operation as General Manager and News Director, it was time to leave the mountains for the coast of southeastern North Carolina and WWAY.
Tammy Rondinaro is a realtor with Keller Williams here in Wilmington. They have two grown children. Longtime beach bums, avid gardeners, marginal tennis players, and fans of things historic… the Rondinaros are delighted to call this beautiful part of North Carolina home.
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