Rusty Surette

(Published August 2026)

Rusty Surette is an Evening News Anchor and Executive Producer at KBTX, the Gray Television CBS/CW affiliate in Bryan-College Station.

His co-workers, without qualification, say he is the finest example of broadcaster-as-community-citizen they have had the privilege of knowing.

Jason Hightower was a broadcaster who treated his license as a community obligation, not a business asset.

He understood that local media is only as powerful as the trust it earns from the people it serves.

Rusty Surette lives that obligation just as completely.

In more than 25 years of television news, Rusty has distinguished himself not just for what he covers, but for how he thinks about what local broadcasting can be. He joined KBTX in 2015 and has since anchored the station’s flagship newscasts at 5, 6, and 10 PM while simultaneously serving as executive producer — a dual responsibility that requires both creative vision and operational command.

Rusty’s journalism has earned recognition at every level. He’s been honored by the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas for investigative reporting, earned multiple regional RTDNA Edward R. Murrow Awards, and been nominated for several regional Emmy Awards. Since 2019, he has been named Best TV Personality in the Bryan-College Station market across multiple independent reader and viewer polls – not once, but year after year.

When a community votes the same journalist their favorite, consistently, it is because that journalist has made good on the unspoken promise of local news: to show up, to care, and to get it right.

Jason Hightower was a broadcaster who never mistook the microphone for the mission.

The mission was always the people. Rusty Surette has that same understanding – baked into everything he does on-air, behind the camera, and in the boardrooms and meeting halls and community events where many journalists never set foot.