Legendary News Anchor Leaving NBC New York After 50 Years

Chuck Scarborough, the face of NBC 4 New York for half a century is leaving the network.

Chuck Scarborough is an American television journalist and author. Since 1974, he has been the lead news anchor at WNBC, the New York City flagship station of the NBC Television Network and has also appeared on NBC News. He currently anchors News 4 New York at 6 p.m. every weeknight.

Scarborough joined NBC News in March 1974 as sole anchor of WNBC-TV's then-new 5:00 PM newscast, NewsCenter 4 (later renamed News 4 New York). Eventually, he became the station's lead anchor at 6pm and 11pm. In 2003, he became the unofficial "dean" of New York-area television news anchors when WABC-TV anchor Bill Beutel retired after 37 years.

He surpassed Beutel as New York's most tenured English-language news anchor in 2011. Five years later, Scarborough succeeded Rafael Pineda of Spanish-language WXTV as the longest-serving anchor in New York television history. For much of his first 20 years with NBC, he occasionally appeared on the network as an NBC News correspondent and often anchored the network's prime-time news updates.

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Scarborough has won 36 local Emmy Awards, and was one of the first inductees into the New York State Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame in 2005. He was inducted alongside Sue Simmons, his co-anchoring partner from 1980 until Simmons's retirement in June 2012. They were together longer than any other anchor team in New York City television history.

Chuck Scarborough Set to Retire After 50 Years

According to Yahoo News, 81 year old Scarborough announced Thursday that he will step away from his role as co-anchor of the 6 p.m. newscast, capping a career that began on March 25, 1974, at 30 Rockefeller Plaza Studio 6B. He has co-anchored the 6 p.m. broadcast with Natalie Pasquarella since 2016, when he stepped back from the 11 p.m. news. Scarborough called his departure a “retirement with an asterisk,” noting that he plans to return occasionally for special reports.