Chuck Scarborough to Step Down as WNBC News Anchor After 50-Year Career

The celebrated broadcaster, who started at the New York station in 1974, announced that he would wrap up his anchoring career on Dec. 12.

By David Lomske | Dec 03, 2024 Updated 02:59 a.m. ET

Chuck Scarborough, the broadcaster who for 50 years brought New Yorkers news of blizzards, financial collapses, terror attacks and assassinations, said Thursday that he would step down from his anchoring duties at WNBC.

“The time has come to pass the torch,” Mr. Scarborough said at the end of the 6 p.m. newscast. “Fifty years, eight months and 17 days after I walked into the door here at the headquarters of the National Broadcasting Company, I will step away from this anchor desk.”

Mr. Scarborough, 81, said his last broadcast as anchor will be on Dec. 12. He will not leave WNBC entirely, and will contribute periodically to special projects, NBC 4 New York said in a statement.

Beginning with “Good evening, I’m Chuck Scarborough,” Mr. Scarborough became an institution in New York over the decades he delivered the news about everything from storms and financial crises to protests and plane crashes. He announced the shooting of John Lennon in 1980, helmed newscasts in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks and won praise with his team for its coverage of the Covid pandemic.

Mr. Scarborough anchored WNBC’s 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. weekday news shows for more than 40 years. In 2016, he stepped down from the late broadcast and continued as the co-anchor at 6 p.m. The station said his replacement will be announced later.

“Chuck Scarborough is the gold standard in American broadcast journalism,” Eric Lerner, the president and general manager of NBC 4 New York, said in a statement.

A native of Pittsburgh, Mr. Scarborough was in the U.S. Air Forcefor four years before he set off on a career in journalism. He received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern Mississippi, and served as an anchor at two stations in the state.

That was followed by anchoring jobs in Atlanta and Boston before Mr. Scarborough landed at WNBC in 1974.

When he marked his half-century as an anchor in New York in March, Mr. Scarborough hailed what he described as the city’s resilience.

“Each time it was knocked down, people were saying, ‘That’s it, New York can’t possibly survive,’” he told The New York Times. “And each time, we would recover.”