Mike Strug was a familiar face on Philadelphia television for more than 40 years.
After graduating from Temple University with a bachelor’s in journalism in 1964, he worked in local radio for fewer than two years before moving to television. It was 1966 when he became one of the “kid” reporters on Channel 6, even before Action News was launched. He anchored and reported at the ABC affiliate for 12 years. He even tried doing the weather…for three weekends, until management realized he didn’t know an isobar from an ice cream bar.
In 1978 he moved downtown to Channel 3, where he was a street reporter until 1990. That’s when he went to work at Channel 10, where he initially combined part-time reporting with outside consulting.
During that time, away from the newsroom, he created and hosted a real estate program called The New Homes Report. It might have lasted more than 16 months if the housing market hadn’t crashed. He then went on to produce, write and/or narrate a variety of industrial and corporate videos for a long list of clients, ranging from the Rohm and Haas Company to the Carpenters’ Company. He was also involved in the annual broadcast of the Mummers Parade from 1992 to 1995.
In 1996, after NBC bought Channel 10, Strug returned to full-time reporting. He retired in June 2009 after 42 years on the air in Philadelphia.
He won three Emmys for his work, along with awards from the Philadelphia Press Association and the Pennsylvania Associated Press Broadcasters Association.
Strug was born in Society Hill (before anyone realized what would happen to property values there), raised in Logan (before it began sinking into the earth), and spent many years living with his family in the Somerton section of Northeast Philadelphia. Now retired, he lives in Bala Cynwyd.