The News4JAX family is remembering longtime anchor Rob Sweeting, who passed away Friday at the age of 73.
Rob was an anchor at Channel 4 from 1985 to 2015, after which he continued to fill in on the anchor desk for several years and remained a fixture at gatherings of current and former station employees.
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For Rob, journalism – telling stories – was something he was interested in from a young age, growing up in Miami.
“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,” Rob said in a 2016 oral history interview with the Jacksonville Broadcasters Association. “I just enjoyed telling a story to someone they didn’t know that they didn’t know about.”
In high school and college, he wrote for his school newspapers and worked for a public radio station while studying at Florida Atlantic University. His first job after graduation was as a reporter for WPTV in West Palm Beach.
He would record his own video for stories – using a film camera – and later edit them.
Rob’s career then took him to Tampa, Miami, and Atlanta. In Atlanta, he was anchoring news on the weekend mornings.
Then, he learned of an opportunity here at Channel 4 from a coworker who had previously worked at WJXT.
“She said, ‘well, you ought to call my old boss in Jacksonville, they may be looking for someone to do the noon news during the week.’” Rob recalled during the 2016 interview. “I said okay sure, I call, and sure enough, they needed somebody. I came down, I interviewed, I got the job. And 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.”
But Rob didn’t stay for just two or three years – he was here for 30 years, keeping you informed, sharing stories, and connecting with the community.
He anchored Channel 4’s first morning newscast, paired with meteorologist Glenn Wood, and for years, anchored our noon newscast.
Rob later recalled the day in January 1986 when he rushed to the studio, with tears streaming down his face, to tell viewers that the Space Shuttle Challenger had exploded shortly after liftoff, and that there were no survivors. The launch marked the first time in years that television networks didn’t carry a shuttle launch live, because they had become so routine, and also marked the first time a civilian–teacher, Christa McAuliffe, was a part of the crew.
When Channel 4 expanded its evening newscasts in September 1990, moving from just a half-hour at 6 p.m. to an hour and a half starting at 5 p.m., he anchored First at Five with Deborah Gianoulis.
One moment Rob helped bring us a few years after that was particularly memorable: the day in November 1993 that Jacksonville learned it would get an NFL franchise – the Jaguars.
Anchoring the newscast with Deborah Gianoulis, with anchor Tom Wills and sports director Sam Kouvaris covering the NFL league meeting in Chicago, they told the community the news. Channel 4’s coverage after the announcement featured a clip of former mayor Jake Goldbold – who was instrumental in bringing the NFL to Jacksonville – watching the newscast in a conference room at the station and reacting to Rob and Deb’s announcement with “holy (expletive), we got it.”
Over the years, as our newscasts expanded, Rob anchored our 5:30, 6:30, and 11 p.m. newscasts, with co-anchors over time including current News4JAX anchors Jennifer Waugh and Joy Purdy.
In the mid-2000s, Rob co-hosted two series on Channel 4, “Eye on Crime” and “Crime Alert: Primetime.” Each program featured wanted suspects, unsolved cases, and safety advice for the community.
Rob was a part of bringing every major story in the community over those 30 years into your homes, from hurricanes to elections, and more. In January 2009, he traveled to Washington, D.C. to cover the inauguration of President Barack Obama, catching up with Jacksonville residents and others who had traveled to the nation’s capital for the historic moment.
Those of us who worked in the newsroom with Rob got to enjoy his sense of humor, a spark the viewers sometimes saw as well. One of those times was during the noon newscast, when Rob was reading a story about a man who called himself the Limbo King, because he wanted to bring the joy of limbo to the world.
After a clip in which the man said, “limbo is my life,” Rob could hardly contain his laughter, and it lasted well into the next story of sports updates, and beyond.
Rob shared serious times with us as well. In the summer of 2004, Rob was in the newsroom and felt strange while preparing for the nighttime newscasts. After telling others in the newsroom what he was feeling, with chest pains and other symptoms, he decided he needed to go to the hospital. An intern drove him there, and Rob later learned he had just had a heart attack; in fact, the similar symptoms he had felt the night before had also been a heart attack.
Once Rob recovered and came back to work, he shared his story, hoping his message of awareness, prevention, and not ignoring your health, could help others.
In 2015, Rob stepped away from full-time anchoring so he could spend more time with family, travel, and teach. He continued to come back for several years to fill in for other anchors.
One gig he was quite proud of was being an extra in the movie “Coming 2 America” starring Eddie Murphy. The movie was filmed in Atlanta, where Rob was living at the time. After it was released in 2021, some eagle-eyed colleagues did spot him in the movie’s wedding reception scene. (He’s wearing a pink suit; in case you go back and look.)
In the years after he left the anchor desk, Rob continued to be a fixture in our Channel 4 family, joining us in celebrating colleagues and milestones, as well as at somber occasions, such as the funeral for longtime WJXT chief meteorologist George Winterling.
And in 2024, when WJXT marked 75 years of broadcasting, Rob joined other longtime station employees, including Sam Kouvaris and studio manager Freddie Rhodes, at a Jacksonville Broadcasters Association luncheon spotlighting Channel 4’s history.
When Sweeting left the anchor desk in 2015, he told the community he was not saying goodbye, but rather ‘see you later’. You can read his message in his own words here.