Fred Cantú, aka "Uncle Fred," who is synonymous with Austin TV, is celebrating 50 years on air.
The CBS Austin KEYE reporter started spinning records at 1600 KBOR Brownsville at the age of 17. He also got practice doing news and color commentary on high school football games.
"The BOR stood for border cause it was on the border, but the kids said it stood for boring," Cantú once joked in the Austin American-Statesman.
The University of Texas at Austin student showed up for school in 1980 as an electrical engineering major, but while in school, he started working part-time as weekend anchor at KNOW/KCSW now KFIT “Sun Radio” and KBPA “Bob FM.”
In 1982, he got back into programming full time launching KTXZ 1560 with “Music of your Life” followed by “All Star Rock & Roll” and “Tejano Hits.”
Going back to school to finish his journalism degree, in 1988 Cantú part-timed at KVET-AM “The Country Giant.”
"In 1990 Channel 7 (now FOX 7 KTBC) was my first on-air TV job in Austin after spending the 80s up and down the dial on Austin radio," Cantu posted on Facebook.
After serving as the KTBC weekend anchor, Cantú worked his way up to a top rated morning anchor for KVUE 24 from 1995 to 2001. In 2002, he started with CBS Austin where he has worked as an anchor/reporter. He also was the 5 and 10pm newscast anchor for sister-station Telemundo 42.2.
Over the years Cantú has picked up awards like being named a five-time winner of Best TV Anchor in the annual Austin Chronicle readers' poll and a Texas Associated Press award. He was also nominated for the Texas Radio Hall of Fame in 2011.
And according to his bio, Cantú was also nominated for a Grammy!
"Around 1984 I was at KTXZ programming All Star Rock & Roll, a mix of oldies and local music," Cantú told mikemcguff.com. "I was approached by someone from a local guitar band called Trash, Twang & Thunder. They needed a riot sound effect for a recording. I found a sound effect in public domain and made them a dub. They decided to credit me for the riot on the album which ended up nominated for a Grammy. Since my name was on the album I was included in the nomination. 'We' didn’t win."
Do yourself a favor and look up Cantú's Austin-area pronunciations guide! Someone in Houston should do this.
