CLICK TO HEAR JACK HALL’S INTERVIEW WITH STEVE ASPLUND
It’s the end of an era in Upper Peninsula journalism.
Steve Asplund, the longtime news anchor at WLUC-TV 6, broadcast his final show Wednesday night. He has been at TV-6 in various roles for more than 42 years, serving in recent years as the station’s news director. Asplund delivered an emotional final newscast Wednesday night, joined by all of his colleagues, and his wife.
Much of the newscast included tributes from Asplund’s current and former co-workers. He also received a proclamation signed by all of the Upper Peninsula’s lawmakers, and Governor Gretchen Whitmer.
So, why retire now?
“My wife, Ann, has been retired for a couple of years and I’m 66 years old,” Asplund said. “I want to go and see the kids and basically not have any deadlines to get back to. The news business is all-consuming.”
Asplund started at Channel Six in the days of black-and-white television, and has had to adapt to changes in technology over the years.
“I started shooting 16 millimeter film and now its progressed all the way through videotape and digital tape to little SD cards,” Asplund said. “The technology has really rifled forward in the last four decades to the point where anything I learned in college, basically, back in the 70’s, is almost, if not entirely, extinct today with how broadcast media operates.”
Asplund says he appreciates the cooperation he’s had from the people of the Upper Peninsula in telling their stories, as well as his many co-workers.
“It’s cliché to say, but it really is the people you meet, the people you work with,” Asplund said. “It’s the people you do stories on that really change the way you operate as a person. You grow and learn each day by talking to those people and experiencing what they have, and sharing their stories.”
Asplund’s retirement caps off a year of change at TV-6, following the retirement of longtime news anchor Greg Trick, and the firing of longtime weatherman Karl Bohnak over his refusal to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
As for Asplund, he ended this way:
“Happy trails. See you down the road,” Asplund said.
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