Ernie Anastos, the longtime television anchor and talk show host whose Everyman personality and sturdy voice defined how New Yorkers received their news for over four decades, died on Thursday. He was 82.
WABC-TV, where Mr. Anastos got his start and where he anchored “Eyewitness News” for 11 years, announced his death under a banner that he would have found familiar: a breaking news bulletin live from the New York studio.
His wife, Kelly Anastos, confirmed his death and said he had died of pneumonia at a hospital in Mount Kisco, N.Y.
Mr. Anastos started as a reporter at WABC-TV in 1978, according to his old station, and would go on to work at WCBS, WWOR and WNYW, receiving 30 Emmy Awards, including the Emmy Lifetime Award, and an Edward R. Murrow Award. His quintessential delivery, undulating as he shifted from topic to topic, was the voice other anchors emulated.
His tenure delivering the news spanned the historically high crime rates of the 1980s, the aftermath of the death of Princess Diana, Fidel Castro’s reign in Cuba and the Sept. 11 attacks. But he especially like delivering good news, even creating special segments dedicated to uplifting stories, including “Positively Ernie” and “New York Star of the Day.”
“People like Ernie,” Dari Alexander, a former co-anchor with Mr. Anastos at Fox 5, said in 2010. “He’s never let them down.”
He even managed to win over the Beastie Boys, who gave the New York anchor a shout-out in their 1992 song “Finger Lickin’ Good.” (“I’ll be in the paper, the news with Ernie Anastos.”)
One of Mr. Anastos’s signature segues was introducing the forecast with a one-liner and ending it with another. He rarely missed a beat, except for one broadcast in 2009.
“It takes a tough man to make a tender forecast,” Mr. Anastos began. He meant to say, “keep plucking that chicken,” but an expletive seemingly left his mouth instead.
“We thought nothing of it — we got off the air and no one said anything,” he explained later. It was all over the internet by the next morning.
“If you keep saying, ‘I didn’t really say that,’ it doesn’t sound right,” he told The New York Times in 2010. “This is New York. That particular word is practically ‘hello,’ the way it is used.”
Ernest Alexander Anastos was born on July 12, 1943, in Nashua, N.H. His father, Phillip Anastos, a Greek immigrant, ran travel agencies in Boston and Lowell, Mass., and once went into business with Aristotle Onassis, the Greek shipping magnate. His mother, Alexandra (Vaniotis), managed the home. Mr. Anastos’s father had a Sunday morning radio program, “Grecian Echoes,” on which he would provide travel information and give commentary on family values.
Mr. Anastos considered joining the priesthood (his paternal grandfather was one of the first Greek Orthodox priests to be ordained in the United States), but eventually broadcast journalism called. As early as 10 years old, Mr. Anastos would pretend to be a radio announcer and read made-up stories to whoever would listen.
At 15, he landed his first radio position in New Hampshire and continued in radio while studying sociology and anthropology at Northeastern University. After graduating, he landed a job at WRKO-AM in Boston. Five years later, in 1976, he landed his first television role at WPRI in Providence, R.I., and in 1978 he started as a reporter in New York at WABC, where he worked alongside Rose Ann Scamardella, the first woman to anchor the news in New York.
He is survived by Ms. Anastos and two children, Nina Floyd and Phillip Anastos, as well as four grandchildren.
“When you’re out on the street and people come to you and they say I was watching you last night and they’ll tell you what you were reporting,” he said in an interview with his “Eyewitness News” colleague and fellow anchor Bill Ritter, “something that makes you really understand that they were watching this thing, they weren’t just flipping dials or passing by, they were sitting down and paying attention to what you were talking about. That’s very personal.”
Remy Tumin is a reporter for The Times covering breaking news and other topics.
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