Retiring news anchor’s successor gears up for job

HOT SPRINGS — Hot Springs transplant Rolly Hoyt knows that he has big shoes — correction, Air Jordans — to fill, but he has no plans to “replace” the man who helped him get his first job at THV11.

Hoyt, who will be co-anchoring the station’s 10 p.m. newscast starting in January, said he plans to make the seat his own as longtime anchor Craig O’Neill retires on Dec. 29.

“Everybody knows Craig only wears Air Jordans, even with a tuxedo. … I know I don’t have to replace him. That’s been the approach I’ve been taking,” Hoyt said.

Hoyt said when he and his wife, Jennifer, first came to Arkansas to work at Oaklawn, it was as legendary Terry Wallace was retiring, and they were brought on to help with publicity and communications.

“He was coming to the end of his career, so we had to try and replace and follow Terry,” he said. “So this is my second go-around of following in behind an Arkansas legend. And so we learned a couple of lessons about 10 years ago, and we’ll try and apply those this time around. Just try not to replace him; he’s irreplaceable. He’s a unique person, one-of-akind, and so [I have to] just try and be me.”

Drawn to sports play-byplay as a child, Hoyt went to Boston University for a journalism degree, where he studied with nationally known sportscasters like Joe Tessitore and Bob Wischusen. Hoyt said he did his internships and started working at Suffolk Downs, a short detour that took 15-20 years before he got into local news and sports.

Hoyt ended up working for ESPN and NBC for some time before moving to Hot Springs to work with Oaklawn. As his work with the cable networks started “to dry up,” Hoyt saw O’Neill at a Relay for Life event.

“And I said, ‘I think I need a job,’” Hoyt recalled. “And he said, ‘Our sports guy is leaving.’ And I had already done some packages for them for Wes Moore, and I’m already working at the biggest professional sport in Arkansas. I can learn Razorbacks; we can do this.”

The news director told Hoyt the sports position was already filled, but there was an open weekend producer position.

“I got my foot in the door back there working as a weekend producer, and he said he’d let me get on the air once in a while,” he said. “And it’s just just biding my time and working as a team. Different positions would open up, and they let me get on air. Then they looked around and they said, ‘Wow, Rolly is the only one who can remember a presidential administration from before Obama, so that helps us in some of these intense stories.’ So they said, ‘We’d like you to report; we’ll take you off weekends.’”

Hoyt became the investigative reporter for THV11 before being named evening anchor in 2021.

“We’re thrilled to promote Rolly to this important role at 10,” Marty Schack, THV11 president and general manager, said in a news release. “He is an advocate for Arkansas communities and lives and breathes the ‘This Is Home’ mission of THV11.”

Hoyt, his wife and two daughters live in Hot Springs with “two dogs, a bird and a horse.”