McElhatton worked for KCBS Radio in San Francisco for 25 years, starting two weeks after college graduation. Early in his career, he hosted an all-night radio show, "Music 'til Dawn". In the early 1960s, he was the host of "McElhatton In The Morning", a blend of news and comedy, with his sidekick Homer "Friendly Clyde" Welch. He later hosted a radio program called "Viewpoint", which was the area's first telephone talk show. McElhatton later became news director of KCBS radio, where he helped change the format of the station to an all-news format.
While working in radio at KCBS, McElhatton hosted TV Bingo, a daytime show on KTVU Channel 2. McElhatton became a television news anchor for KPIX-TV Channel 5, the first television station in San Francisco starting in 1977 upon leaving KCBS radio. The hiring of McElhatton, a radio broadcaster, was noted by some to be a bold stroke. He remained as a news anchor with KPIX until his retirement in 2000. He was noted, along with that of CBS newsman Walter Cronkite, to be among two good reporters during a forum by U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein. At his peak, his salary as a newscaster was reportedly approximately $750,000 per year. For a decade from the late 1970s to late 1980s, his co-anchor was Wendy Tokuda, with whom he still maintained personal contact. Tokuda left KPIX for KNBC in Los Angeles in 1992. Tokuda rejoined the station in 2007. During his career in television, the news program that he anchored was frequently the top rated news broadcast in terms of audience size. He had several film credits, including Cardiac Arrest and Thief of Hearts. In Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, Hitchcock filmed a never-used 1-minute scene showing Midge Wood and Scottie Ferguson listening to a radio report that the murderer had been arrested in Europe — the unseen radio announcer in this scene originally was McElhatton, but in his place are the dubbed-in voices of the film's restorers Robert A. Harris and James C. Katz. In 2006, the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame was created. McElhatton was among the inaugural inductees. McElhatton was a guest lecturer at San Francisco State University in the Broadcast and Electronic Communications Department until the mid-1980s.
Retirement
McElhatton's second wife, Bonnie Chastain, died in 1988. He lived with his third wife, Karen, in the Palm Desert, California area. In late 2004, he suffered a mild stroke, but reportedly was recuperating and doing fine in 2005. McElhatton's son Terry, former news director at KNTV in San Jose, died in June 2008. McElhatton died Monday, August 23, 2010 of a stroke-related illness in Rancho Mirage. McElhatton was survived by his third wife, Karen, as well as two children and eight grandchildren. He was 81.
