Whatever
Happened To...
TV broadcaster Shimooka
appears on Oceanic CableQuestion: What ever happened to Russell Shimooka, who used to anchor the evening news for KGMB?
Answer: Russell Shimooka, who left KGMB more than two years ago, continues to work as a broadcast journalist and appears on cable television in Hawaii.
Shimooka is a reporter for the weekly Oceanic Cable show "Sports People Hawaii," which is shown at 7:30 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. He also has conducted pre-game live interviews with the University of Hawaii football team on Oceanic's OC-16.
In addition, he is a fill-in news reporter and disc jockey for Lite 96 KUMU Radio.
Shimooka was hired in 1997 by KGMB to replace Tim Tindall as a news anchor and left the station in August 2000.
"My anchor contract was up, and they elected not to renew it. They offered me a position as a field reporter, which I declined for personal reasons," he said.
Since leaving KGMB, Shimooka also has been traveling the world as a member of the media consultant team to Adm. Thomas Fargo and his staff at CINCPAC.
Shimooka was born in Hawaii and grew up on the mainland. The family moved often as his father, a career Army man, was transferred from one post to another.
Shimooka moved back to Hawaii to attend high school at Kamehameha Schools and then returned to the mainland to go to New Mexico Military Institute, a junior college, where he earned an Associate of Arts degree.
He then attended the University of Hawaii at Manoa, graduating in 1982 with a bachelor's degree in communications.
Shimooka worked from 1981 to 1989 as a news reporter for KITV, and left to be a sportscaster for CBS in Miami. In 1991 he moved to San Francisco to work for three years as a sportscaster for KGO-TV.
Shimooka next moved to Minnesota where he worked as a sports director for the Gannett-owned television station KARE. From 1996 to 1997 he hosted an adventure show on the Travel Channel before returning to the islands to work for KGMB.
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