A pillar of the noted broadcasting program at San Francisco State University, Stuart Hyde was born in Fresno. He worked in the Kaiser shipyards in Richmond at the outbreak of World War II before enlisting in the U.S. Navy. He participated in the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa aboard the attack transport USS Lowndes.
Following the war, Hyde received a BA from UCLA and an MA and PhD from Stanford in Speech and Drama. He taught at Stanford and USC before becoming chair in 1958 of the department now known as Broadcast and Electronic Communications Arts (BECA) at San Francisco State University.
He literally wrote the book on how to be a broadcast announcer. Television and Radio Announcing was published originally in 1959 and revised a dozen times by Hyde, who sought out feedback and information about modern broadcast operations from former students.
For many years, Hyde was the advisor to the SF State campus radio station KSFS, which never received an actual broadcast license but was delivered to dormitory residents (via a carrier-current system) as well as San Francisco cable TV subscribers.
Dr. Stuart Hyde died in 2015 at the age of 91.