Don Sanchez is a five-time Emmy® Award-honored television journalist who spent 40 years at KGO-TV. Sanchez was teamed with Cheryl Jennings to co-anchor the station’s 5 p.m. newscast, in the mid-1980s. And then, in 1987, when the station revamped its late-morning offering of AM San Francisco to become Good Morning Bay Area, it teamed Sanchez with co-host Susan Sikora. The show lasted another two years in its 9 a.m. weekday time slot. The program gave Sanchez an opportunity to meet a wide range of Hollywood celebrities who would travel to San Francisco to be on the show. “Actors, actresses, singers, we had them all,” he says.

Through the 1990s, Sanchez would also anchor all of the station’s newscasts at one time or another – mornings, midday, late afternoon, evening. He was always the station’s go-to guy whenever it needed to keep things moving. Then, the station decided Sanchez would be the best one on staff to be its new entertainment reporter.

It was perfect for Sanchez. It fit his outgoing, fun and lively personality and tapped into his previous experience as co-host of Good Morning Bay Area. “Movie reviews, screenings, Hollywood interviews, and more. I did it all,” he says. And he did it with flair, incorporating a plastic popcorn bucket, filled with popcorn, to illustrate his liking or his love for a new movie he reviewed.

Sanchez retired in 2012 to great fanfare. After all, it is not every day that someone remains at one television station for four decades. The station put together, and aired, a highlight reel featuring Sanchez and practically everything he had done for the station since his very first day back on Sept. 25, 1972.

Sanchez is still very much involved in the television industry. He serves on the board of AFTRA/SAG (American Federation of Television and Radio Artists/Screen Actors Guild), and he is a much-loved member of the Board of Governors of our Chapter, joining in 2014 as a governor. Since 2016, he has been serving as the Board’s regional vice president for San Francisco. And, he was the only choice of the Board of Governors as the chairperson of the Chapter’s Cinema Club. Bio courtesy of Silver Circle Class of 200 NATAS