Anchors
Larry Mendte
Larry Mendte co-anchors CBS 3's Eyewitness News at 6 and 11 p.m. with Susan Barnett.
Mendte and Barnett are the only "homegrown" evening anchor team in the market. Mendte is a native of Lansdowne, Pennsylvania in Delaware County. Barnett grew up in Levittown, Bucks County.
Mendte, whose first job in the news business was delivering the Evening Bulletin as a boy, takes special pleasure in the fact that, as an adult, he is still delivering the evening news in Philadelphia.
One of Philadelphia's most honored broadcasters, Mendte has earned 43 regional Emmy Awards since returning to the Delaware Valley, a record four of them in the "Best Anchor" category. In two recent readers' polls conducted by The Main Line Times and the Delaware County Daily Times, Mendte was voted the area's favorite news anchor. Among his honors, Mendte has been inducted into The Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia's Hall of Fame and was named one of the 75 Greatest Living Philadelpians
by the Philadelphia Daily News.
From the anchor desk and in the field, Mendte has covered Philadelphia's biggest stories of the past decade. He was on the air for several days in a row helping the area through the pain and panic of 9/11. He anchored live from Washington, D.C. for the Clinton Impeachment hearings and for the funeral of Ronald Reagan. Mendte also anchored the news from Los Angeles during the '76ers' run at the NBA championship and from Jacksonville, Florida during the Eagles' 2005 trip to the Super Bowl. His special assignments have also included the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia and live coverage from the Benjamin Franklin Parkway during the historic Live 8 concert.
In 2005, Mendte received several awards from Veterans groups for a series of reports that prompted the city to re-light Philadelphia's Eternal Flame in honor of the nation's war dead. It had been extinguished for more than a decade. His work on behalf of the Eternal Flame was honored on the floor of the United States Senate that year and is now part of the Congressional Record.
Mendte has also been at the forefront of another civic project – the worldwide celebration of Benjamin Franklin's 300th birthday. In addition to many special reports and public appearances at Ben events, Mendte wrote, hosted and produced the Emmy Award-winning Stealing Lightning from the Sky, a half hour documentary about Franklin that aired locally and in 22 additional markets across the country.
Mendte also wrote and directed the Emmy Award winning documentary, Alex Scott: A Stand for Hope, about the life of Alex Scott, who started a lemonade stand to fight pediatric cancer, a disease that would take her life at the age of 8. The documentary played in television markets across the country. It has won several film festivals and was honored by the National Society of Professional Journalists with the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi award for best documentary. This year, Mendte also spearheaded a day long on-air fundraiser that brought in more than $700,000 thousand for the Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation.
Before joining CBS 3 in July, 2003, Mendte was evening news anchor for WCAU-TV, the NBC station in Philadelphia since 1997. Previously, he co-hosted Access Hollywood, the daily half-hour entertainment news magazine produced by NBC in Los Angeles and was weekday anchor and investigative reporter at Chicago's WBBM-TV. While at WBBM, Mendte earned a record 27 Emmy Awards and was twice named "Best Reporter" in Illinois by the Associated Press. His series of reports on school bus safety in Chicago led to two new state laws. Prior to WBBM, Mendte was a main anchor for KFMB-TV in San Diego and a weekend anchor at WABC-TV in New York.
Address e-mails to
mendte@cbs3.com.