Bob MacKenzie, former KTVU reporter, dies at 75

Mr. MacKenzie, who died of cancer at his home in Antioch, was a fixture at KTVU from 1978 until last year, when he made the last of what had become occasional appearances on the air. His forte was the wry yarn about some facet of Bay Area life, a task much harder than it seems.

"He wouldn't take notes, you'd think he wasn't listening to someone, and then he'd turn out the most wonderful story," recalled Rita Williams, a fellow KTVU reporter. "He had that knack."

During his career, Mr. MacKenzie was the recipient of 13 local Emmy awards as well as other honors. He was a television critic for the Oakland Tribune and TV Guide before moving from print journalism to the small screen where, he told a Chronicle reporter in 1984, "We make more money for doing less work and that's a fact."

Longtime associates recalled their co-worker as someone with interests that ranged far beyond television's hothouse world. He loved to dance, meeting his wife, Miyuki, at a tango lesson, and he would buy decrepit houses for the joy of fixing them up. He had a summer home in Dunsmuir (Siskiyou County) for several years, a converted church that was a convenient base from which to pursue fly-fishing.

"He looked at the world differently than the rest of us," said Don McCuaig, who worked with Mr. MacKenzie as a photographer on assignments that included road trips across the nation and a D-Day remembrance filmed in Normandy. "You'd be at the airport on a layover and he'd wander off. Anything would catch his eye and attract his attention."

Robert Kenneth MacKenzie grew up in East Oakland, graduating from UC Berkeley in 1962 with a bachelor's degree in journalism. Before long, he was back in Oakland at the Tribune, where he spent 14 years before being hired by TV Guide as the lead critic, continuing to write for that then-influential magazine even after joining KTVU.

But Mr. MacKenzie is remembered best for the type of stories that now seem anachronistic on commercial television: understated and knowing, often bemused, unfolding to some instinctive rhythm.

"I go into a house to meet somebody. I start talking first without taking notes, without the camera rolling," he told The Chronicle in 1984. "Be flexible, be human, don't force the situation. Let it develop."

McCuaig recalled one expedition where, snubbed by a coal-mining company during a series of road trip stories, he and Mr. MacKenzie found themselves in a dying Appalachian town on a Sunday morning. Mr. MacKenzie noticed a pair of cars in a church parking lot and, on a whim, suggested they go inside.

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