Chuck Scarborough signs off WNBC/4 after Thursday's 6 p.m. newscast

WNBC/4 anchor Chuck Scarborough will wrap his historic 50-year run  at WNBC/4 Thursday night, at the end of the station's 6 p.m. broadcast.

Ending a tenure that began on March 25, 1974, as anchor or co-anchor of various broadcasts he will leave a role that no one has held longer in New York television news.

No single individual -- anchor or reporter -- has appeared on a New York TV news broadcast longer than Scarborough, who turned 81 Nov. 4. And no one has come to represent so vast a stretch of New York City's tumultuous history 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,John Gotti and Donald Trump.

In a statement announcing his retirement a couple of weeks ago, Scarborough said, “There is only one word: gratitude. Our WNBC viewers welcomed me into their homes for more than 50 years, trusting me to present the news free of any agenda, faithful to the fundamental principles of accuracy, objectivity and fairness—and to bring them vital, timely information during our darkest and brightest hours. That has been an extraordinary honor.”

In 1980, Scarborough was paired with Sue Simmons on the 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts, and over the next 32 years became the most iconic anchor team on New York TV news. Of Simmons, who retired in 2012, Scarborough said in an interview with Newsday last March that he "probably" wouldn't have lasted these 50 years without her. In an interview with Newsday earlier this year on the occasion of his 50th,  Simmons said “I'm not very articulate about this but we were such opposites, and somehow we meshed. He was a lot more on the serious side when I first met him, but I chipped away over the years and he became such a fun guy. He had a wicked sense of humor, but humor most of the time he couldn't do on the air, so viewers always saw him as a straight-up guy.”

Scarborough -- who has called this a "retirement with an asterisk" because he'll continue to contribute to the station's various broadcasts -- will be replaced on the 6 by Ch. 4 veteran David Ushery, who was introduced during the broadcast on Monday's program where he he joked about "a lot of dark humor about me measuring the drapes in Chuck's office [but] none of that is true." Ushery added that Scarborough "walked into this building today the same way he walked in fifty years ago" -- fully engaged, directing the station's coverage on a busy news day.