Hall of Fame broadcaster Stan Turner leaves memorable legacy at KSTP-TV

Tom Hauser KSTP 2025 09 28

Remembering Stan Turner

Stan Turner is most remembered for “The Voice.” No, not the network TV show.

Since Turner passed away on Sept. 21, his family members say there’s one thing they hear about the most.

“Number one: The voice,” says his daughter, Laura Turner, about the things people say about their memory of her dad. “And how handsome he was when he was on the news. ‘Oh, gosh, he came into our house all the time. Every night we watched him.’” Laura is one of Stan’s three children.

Turner worked at Hubbard Broadcasting from 1968 to 2002 in a variety of roles, from State Capitol reporter to news director to main anchor. He helped lead KSTP-TV to huge ratings success anchoring the news in the late 1970s through the mid-1980s.

He later anchored Hubbard’s national “All News Channel” broadcasts and later had a popular show at KLBB Radio based in Stillwater. Turner also taught journalism at the University of St. Thomas and the University of Minnesota.

“It’s just been an outpouring of love all the way around,” Laura says of the response since her dad passed away after a three-year battle with cancer. “He’d be honored. He’d be humbled.”

Laura cherishes her memories of spending time with her dad at the TV station on University Avenue. “In my early teens, I would come with him every Friday night,” she says. “That was our date. I’d watch him do the news. We’d go to dinner and then come back, he’d do the 10 o’clock, and then we’d go home. But it was fun watching him write the news and do the news.”

Turner interviewed governors and presidents during his career, including an exclusive interview with President Ronald Reagan in 1983 during a presidential visit to Minneapolis.

What many people don’t know is that Turner was a broadcasting legend who “discovered” another local broadcasting legend, Jason Davis. His “On the Road Again” segments took local viewers around the world.

It was all made possible when Turner was vacationing in Phoenix, Arizona, and saw Davis broadcasting for a local station there. He immediately knew he had to hire the man with the engaging British and Australian accent.

“I had no idea what KSTP was, I had no idea where Minneapolis was,” Davis says with a laugh. “I was really just off the boat.”

Davis grew up in Britain and then worked on television for several years in Australia before ending up in Phoenix and then Minneapolis.

“Stan Turner changed my life,” Davis says. “Absolutely changed my life because when he made that phone call that day, everything was different for us, for me and my family.” In fact, Davis and his family still live not far from the Twin Cities nearly 50 years later.

Davis and Turner remained friends long after they both retired, and Davis still marvels at what his friend accomplished.

“Stan Turner was the man to watch every night, and it went on for years.”

The family set up “The Stan Turner Journalism Scholarship” at the University of Minnesota’s Hubbard School of Broadcasting. You can also send memorials to Our Lady of Peace Hospice in St. Paul.