KNBC San Diego evening news anchor Marty Levin has announced plans to retire from broadcasting. His last day at NBC is May 26.

Marty Levin

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“It’s the last day of May ratings," he says. "When they end, I end.”

Has NBC talked about a replacement? “I’m sure they’re talking about it, but I have no idea.” Levin laughs. “It could be Conan O’Brien, the way things are going.”

It will be more than 22 years in the business when Levin leaves the post. “I’ve been doing this a long time,” he says. “It’s time...I think it’s just time to look at doing something else with this middle chunk of my life.”

Any ideas about what the future may hold?

“Nothing specific,” he says. “There’s a lot of opportunity. I’ve just got to get a little more focus on what sounds like it will be interesting and challenging. I really would like to do something that’s new.”

Levin, 64, a native of Bar Harbor, Maine, worked TV news desks in Oregon and Seattle before he arrived in San Diego in 1977. He anchored KGTV (Channel 10) news for three years (no, Levin is not the newscaster comic Will Farrell goofs in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy), then went to NBC in Washington, D.C., where he worked with David Brinkley. A few years later found Levin back in San Diego at KFMB (Channel 8) before moving to the local NBC affiliate in 1987 and taking the evening anchor post at KNSD (Channels 7/39).

When did it occur to Levin be a news guy?

“It never did," he says. "I was one of those kids who was on the student newspaper, and the yearbook, and the college newspaper. I was taking a journalism class at Oregon State University at the time. They posted a note that they were starting a campus radio station. I went over and read the news for them. I did that for five or six months before I switched to one of the commercial stations. News had some value then. Everybody did five minutes at the top and the bottom of the hour, or in our case, 20/20 news. It just followed along from that. I’ve been very fortunate.”

Levin describes the high points of a career in news as being the low points for everybody else. He has co-anchored marathon newscasts through a number of tragedies, all of which he says, “have been incredibly taxing. It’s something like being an emergency room doctor. You just do routine things every day, then all of a sudden there’s this mad rush from something awful, and you don’t really realize what you’re in the midst of until it is all over. You hope you did your job professionally and effectively.”

Over the years, Levin had received 13 Emmy Awards from the National Academy of Arts and Sciences, and three Golden Mikes from the Radio and Television News Association of Southern California.