The longtime Huntsville broadcaster and sports voice is set to be honored Nov. 7 in Kilgore after decades on KSAM and around Bearkat athletics.
HUNTSVILLE, Texas - Clyde "Kooter" Roberson, whose voice became a familiar part of daily life for generations of Huntsville listeners and Sam Houston sports fans, has been selected for the Texas Radio Hall of Fame's Class of 2026.
The Texas Radio Hall of Fame announced its 2026 inductees on Aug. 14 and listed Roberson among 20 radio professionals chosen for induction. The organization said the class will be honored Nov. 7 at the Texas Broadcast Museum in Kilgore.
For Huntsville and Walker County residents, the selection is not simply another media award on a statewide list. It is recognition for a broadcaster whose work was tied closely to the rhythm of local life: morning radio on KSAM, play-by-play and public-address duties connected to Sam Houston athletics, high school sports coverage and community events that depended on a familiar local voice.
That local significance is part of why the announcement stands out here even though the induction ceremony itself will happen in East Texas. Roberson's career was rooted in Huntsville, and the Hall of Fame vote effectively places one of the town's best-known on-air personalities into a statewide institution that honors long-running broadcast influence.
A Huntsville radio career with deep local reach
A July post from 101.7 KSAM, written during the Hall of Fame voting period, described Roberson as a broadcaster whose voice became nearly impossible to miss in Huntsville over the course of four decades. The station said he joined KSAM in 1970 and spent 40 years as its morning host, building a style that listeners came to associate with the station and with the city itself.
The same KSAM nomination post said Roberson's work extended well beyond weekday radio. It credited him with play-by-play for the Huntsville Hornets and Sam Houston State Bearkats across football, basketball and other sports, and said that even after broadcast rights shifted elsewhere, he continued serving as a public-address presence for Bearkat games and at the Walker County Fair and Rodeo grounds.
That account is consistent with older Sam Houston athletics materials. Archived and historical GoBearkats.com pages identify Roberson as part of Bearkat radio coverage for football games, and an older university feature notes his long working relationship with the athletic program. Together, those public references support the broad picture long familiar to Huntsville audiences: Roberson was not just a disc jockey or isolated sports announcer, but a multi-role broadcaster whose voice carried across several of the area's most visible public settings.
The KSAM nomination also said Roberson began at the station while he was still a Huntsville High School student and remained closely tied to Walker County for most of the next five decades. The post described him as deeply involved in community life, including work with the Walker County Fair Board and longtime participation at Calvert Baptist Church.
The Hall of Fame selection elevates a broadcaster many residents already viewed as part of the community's civic soundtrack. Morning radio, Friday nights, Bearkat games and county events often rely on personalities who become inseparable from place. Roberson's recognition reflects that kind of longevity.
Why the recognition matters locally
Local media honors can sometimes feel internal to the industry, but this one carries wider resonance because Roberson's work overlapped with so many public institutions in Huntsville. KSAM has long operated as a hometown station, and Sam Houston athletics, Huntsville High School sports and county events each function as gathering points that shape local identity.
When a broadcaster spends decades moving among those spaces, the role becomes more than a job. The voice itself becomes part of how residents remember seasons, rivalries, morning routines and public celebrations. That is especially true in smaller cities, where a single radio personality may be heard across very different parts of community life.
Roberson's Hall of Fame selection also arrives at a time when local broadcasting continues to change rapidly. Consolidation, streaming audio and shifting sports-media habits have altered the way audiences encounter hometown coverage. Recognizing someone whose career developed in a more locally rooted broadcasting model serves as a reminder of how much community radio once depended on personalities with deep place-based ties.
That does not make the honor merely nostalgic. It also highlights a type of service that still matters: trusted local presence, continuity and familiarity. For Huntsville listeners who spent years waking up to KSAM with "Kooter in your Ear" or hearing Roberson around Bearkat athletics, the Hall of Fame vote formalizes something they already believed about his place in the community.
The induction ceremony is scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 7, in Kilgore. For Huntsville, one of the community's most recognizable broadcast voices is now part of the Texas Radio Hall of Fame's Class of 2026. Congratulations, Kooter!