WNBC’s Chuck Scarborough says goodbye after Thursday’s newscast

WNBC/4 anchor Chuck Scarborough will conclude his historic 50-year career with WNBC/4 on Thursday evening at the end of the station’s 6 p.m. broadcast.

He is ending his tenure as anchor or co-anchor of various programs that began March 25, 1974, and will leave a role no longer held in New York television news.

No single person – anchor or reporter – has appeared on a New York television news program longer than Scarborough, who turned 81 on November 4th. And no one has represented such a large part of New York’s turbulent history in the past 50 years.

Scarborough has anchored Ch. 4 covers 9/11, the COVID pandemic, AIDS, Superstorm Sandy, five major plane crashes, three power outages, a few Wall Street crashes and seven mayors, starting with Abe Beame. There was Son of Sam, a city on the verge of bankruptcy, John Gotti and Donald Trump.

In a statement announcing his retirement a few weeks ago, Scarborough said, “There is only one word: gratitude.” Our WNBC viewers welcomed me into their homes for more than 50 years and trusted me to be the “To present news free from any agenda and true to the core principles of accuracy, objectivity and fairness – and to provide them with important, timely information in our darkest and brightest times. This has been an extraordinary honor.”

In 1980, Scarborough was paired with Sue Simmons on the 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts, becoming the most prominent anchor team in New York television news over the next 32 years. Of Simmons, who retired in 2012, Scarborough said in an interview with Newsday last March that he “probably” wouldn’t have lasted those 50 years without her. In an interview with Newsday earlier this year to mark his 50th birthday, Simmons said: “I can’t say this very clearly, but we were so opposites and somehow we fit together.” He was much more serious when I first met him, but I slacked off over the years and he became such a funny guy. He had a wicked sense of humor, but he couldn’t show humor most of the time on the show, so viewers always saw him as an honest guy.”

Scarborough – who has described this as a “retirement with an asterisk” as he will continue to contribute to the station’s various shows – will be replaced by Ch. on the 6th. 4 veteran David Ushery, who was featured during the broadcast on Monday’s show, where he joked about “a lot of dark humor about me measuring the curtains in Chuck’s office (but) none of that is true.” Ushery added, that Scarborough “entered this building today in the same way he entered it fifty years ago” – fully engaged as he led the station’s coverage on a busy news day.