Beamer knows news — and it’s not his retirement, he says
Though he’s been the face of News 4 San Antonio for more than 30 years, Randy Beamer says he’s always felt more comfortable behind the camera. Which may explain why the Emmy Award-winning anchor and photojournalist doesn’t think his imminent retirement is a headline.
“It’s not news,” Beamer said. “It’s not that big a deal when anybody in news moves on.”
His fans and colleagues would beg to differ.
“Beamer is San Antonio,” said Don Harris, the longtime News 4 San Antonio sports anchor. “He’s obsessed with the history of the city. And because of that, it’s got him more empathetic and compassionate to all people of San Antonio. And he kind of understands their stories and cares deeply about individuals in our community.”
After more than 40 years in television news, Beamer, 61, is signing off. He will retire with his farewell newscast at 10 tonight on WOAI-TV.
“The R-word for me is kind of hard,” he said. “(So) it’s not an end, it’s just a beginning.”
The Normal, Ill., native first hit the Alamo City market in 1983 at KENS-TV, but he is best known for his three decades of service with News 4, going back to 1989 when the NBC affiliate rocked the call letters KMOL and Beamer rocked a mustache that would give Ron Burgundy anchorman envy.
Yet while Beamer’s look and co-anchors have changed over the years, the veteran reporter’s love for telling the stories of San Antonio has never gone out of style. And he has often landed those stories by trading the coziness of the news desk for a more boots-on-theground perspective with his own camera.
Harris praised Beamer as a genius and a dry wit who genuinely cares about getting the story and not being the story, whether it’s about politics on both sides of the border, conflicts foreign and domestic, or just that beat-up old ice house on the outskirts of town.
That eye for highlighting the stories of San Antonio and South Texas has taken him around the nation and around the world.
In 2006, Beamer traveled to Iraq to report and shoot his own documentary about San Antonians who ran the biggest hospital in the war-torn country. He also has covered Texans guarding detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
Then there are those Texas tragedies Beamer has covered on the scene: Hurricane Ike from Galveston and Hurricane Harvey from Houston, the high school shooting in Santa Fe and the church shooting in Sutherland Springs.
Yet for all those career highlights, Beamer spoke just as fondly of more up-close-andpersonal stories. Covering a Bandidos funeral back when he was with KENS as gang members shoveled dirt on a casket. Turning his interviews with Selena into a mini-documentary right after the singer's death. Following the family of Tracy Ortiz, a young mother on the West Side who was killed in a drive-by shooting in 2003.
“I don't think of it as a body of work,” Beamer said. “I think of it as living here in this community and pointing out some of the problems we need to work on, but also celebrating all of the things we have.”
That community has certainly celebrated Beamer. When he posted the news of his impending retirement late last month on his Facebook page, @randy.beamer, hundreds of well-wishers thanked him and gave him virtual hugs and thumbs-up for his work.
“You were the first newscaster I watched when I moved to San Antonio 32 years ago,” wrote Adeina Anderson, a longtime Beamer fan who has the Facebook “top fan” badge to prove it. “You sent me a coupon for free bread in our welcome gift, and I named my cat after you. You are a true inspiration and an amazing person.”
“Thank you for your dedication, wisdom and witty sense of humor that made so many of us big fans of your work,” Charity Mccurdy Mcmenamin wrote. “We've been so lucky to get your unique perspective from both behind and in front of the camera lens all these years.”
“It's stunning,” Beamer said of the praise. “I'm overwhelmed and I can't thank people enough.”
Before coming to San Antonio, Beamer worked at two Des Moines, Iowa, affiliates while earning a journalism degree at Drake University. He also did a brief stint at KUSA-TV in Denver between his work at KENS-TV and then ultimately at WOAI-TV.
Even then, Beamer strove to report the news, not just read it off the teleprompter. In 1989 when he joined News 4 as a weekend anchor, he told the Express-news the chance to report and anchor was “the best of both worlds.”
About the only major shakeup to Beamer's unflappable presence on the nightly news was in 1997, when he shocked viewers by doing the unthinkable: shaving his mustache.
At the time, Beamer's hairfree lip was such a big deal that KMOL even whipped up a computerized image of Beamer sans 'stache for its market research.
“I think the coverage of TV news over the years here drove some of that,” Beamer said, referring to the Express-news. Then he added with a chuckle: “I blame you guys.”
Beamer turned heads again a few years later when he married KSAT-TV anchor Ursula Pari in 2000. The anchors from competing networks divorced in 2007.
Beamer later parted ways with another San Antonio TV news fixture — the News 4 downtown studio — when News 4 moved to the KABB building in 2014 after the Sinclair Broadcasting Group purchased WOAITV.
Beamer joked that he hopes his exit tonight boosts WOAITV'S ratings, a tongue-in-cheek nod to WOAI-TV'S newscasts ranking third behind KENS-TV and KSAT-TV. Then, in the next breath, he said he's never really come to peace with those ratings, given that the people he's worked with are the best.
As for what's next for Beamer, he said he plans to use the time to unplug from media and reconnect with his kids — a teenage daughter, a son back from college and two older daughters. He also plans to continue helping with charities. And, of course, there's his photography.
And while viewers should tune in tonight for Beamer's parting words, the affable anchorman just couldn't resist giving his own spin on that classic Ron Burgundy signoff.
“Don't even pretend to be classy, San Antonio,” he said. “Just be you.”