Stu Bykofsky | Tom Snyder made a splash here

AS A NEWS ANCHOR, his eyes were coals that burned holes in the cold TV lens.

As an interviewer, his style - and braying laugh - were satirized by Dan Aykroyd on "Saturday Night Live."

A solid if unorthodox TV journalist, Tom Snyder rose from local to network TV in part by breaking the rules - a "hot" personality in what Marshall McLuhan famously once described as a "cool" medium.

Tom Snyder died Sunday in San Francisco. He was 71.

Snyder began his career as a radio reporter in Milwaukee in the 1960s, then moved into local TV news, landing at KYW-TV in 1965 and leaving in 1970 to anchor at the NBC-owned station in Los Angeles, where he drove up ratings.

He launched the "Tomorrow" show on NBC in 1973 and somewhere became known as Tom Terrific.

He then moved from L.A. to anchor NBC's New York station, where ratings again improved.

His goal once might have been to replace either John Chancellor on the "NBC Nightly News" or Johnny Carson on the "Tonight" show, he told me in a lengthy 1980 interview, but wound up hosting "Tomorrow," which aired after Carson. He had concluded that "Tomorrow" was his "high, hard one" - pitcher's lingo for his best pitch.

Many critics found him refreshing and brash.

Others called him a showboat and abrasive.

As host of "Tomorrow," he revealed wide-ranging interests and an offbeat sense of humor. Guests included race-monger David Duke, music icon John Lennon, mass murderer Charles Manson, porn star Marilyn Chambers, philosopher Ayn Rand and punk rocker Johnny Rotten.

On the dark "Tomorrow" set, Snyder sat in a pool of light that illuminated him and a cloud of cigarette smoke.

Just like the legendary Edward R. Murrow, Snyder smoked on the air and probably would have sipped a martini - his favorite drink - if bosses had let him.

Snyder hung his lanky 6-4 frame in a padded chair, totally comfortable in the medium, sometimes cracking jokes with off-camera crew.

He casually told viewers to "fire up a colortini, sit back, relax and watch the pictures, now, as they fly through the air."

Nothing lasts forever, especially in TV, and "Tomorrow" was dropped in 1982 to make way for David Letterman, ironically a Snyder fan.

Snyder later anchored for the ABC-owned TV station in New York, had a national talk show and dabbled elsewhere without leaving much of a mark.

The five years he spent in Philly (he lived in Society Hill) were among his happiest. He was hired to report for the 6 p.m. news, but management sensed star quality and also had him co-anchor the noon news with local star Marciarose Shestack, known professionally by her first name alone. They became the nation's first "Eyewitness News" team.

They had more chemistry than DuPont. And MR, as friends call her, became a forever friend.

MR hadn't been in touch with Tom Terrific for several months, but told me his spirits seemed good then, as he battled leukemia.

We talked yesterday about Snyder's time here, and about some of his passions - model trains, martinis, golf and practical jokes. (He worked here before newspapers figured out that TV anchors were stars in their own galaxy, so romantic lives largely went unreported.)

At KYW (now known as CBS3), some called the tall man with the cleft chin, big eyebrows and big ambitions "Terrible Tom," because of the practical jokes and because he could come off as arrogant.

"In Philadelphia, for heaven's sake, you drive out of a gas station ahead of a guy and he gives you the finger. That's not arrogant?" Snyder asked me rhetorically.

"I'm not crazy about being followed across town by someone who wants to make conversation," he said, adding that he didn't like autograph hounds, either.

In a classic, often-told incident, Snyder dumped a plate of spaghetti and meatballs on his program director's head. Less told was that Snyder bought the man a new shirt and offered to let him dump back.

MR said Snyder had a "garbage-truck mind."

"He could engage anyone he was talking with about anything - and he knew something about it," she said. "You felt comfortable in his hands. You might not have felt comfortable about where it was going to go," she said, laughing hard, "but you felt comfortable in his hands."

At least when he wasn't holding a plate of spaghetti.

Send e-mail to stubyko@phillynews.

com or call 215-854-5977. For recent columns: http://go.philly.com/byko.