Chuck Scarborough's 50 years at Ch. 4 — the half-century mark is today, March 25 — are perhaps most easily rendered in numbers. They're big ones, too, except that nobody has ever bothered to count how many programs, stories, specials, teases, or promos Scarborough has actually appeared in. The obvious point is that no one — reporter or anchor — has ever appeared in more, Newsday reports.
In a small office set off to the side of the cavernous newsroom where he's spent so much of his life, Scarborough is pressed on how he feels about a landmark few have reached in the history of American television news, or may ever reach again. “Beyond gratitude,” he says, “and a fair amount of astonishment.”
Astonishment is warranted. There are believed to be only two anchors in the United States who have done this longer — Dave Ward, of Houston's KTRK/13 (who retired in 2017 after 51 years) and Don Alhart, of Rochester's WHAM/13, who hit the 50-year mark in 2016 and is still on the air.
Over these past 50 years, Scarborough has anchored Ch. 4's coverage of 9/11, the COVID pandemic, AIDS, Superstorm Sandy, five major plane crashes, three blackouts, a couple of Wall Street crashes and seven mayors, beginning with Abe Beame. There was Son of Sam, a city's near-bankruptcy, a mob guy named Gotti and another guy named Trump. During the rip-roaring if-it-bleeds-it-leads era of the 1970-80s, Ch. 4 — not to mention Chs., 2, 5, 7, 9 and 11 — documented enough mayhem to earn New York the title Murder Capital USA. Indeed, a lamentable WNBC November sweeps series from 1985 even wondered, “Is God punishing us?”
From a TV news perspective, no city on the planet has been busier these past 50 years, not remotely. Scarborough was at the center of it all.
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