After spending so many days sharing the news with New York City, Sue Simmons finally had a day of her own Friday.
The WNBC/Channel 4 newscaster received a fitting sendoff during Friday night’s newscast, her final anchoring gig at the station after a three-decade career.
The 11 p.m. show featured highlight videos, celebrity salutes, laughs and tears, precipitated by the station’s decision not to renew Simmons’ contract.
Simmons’ replacement has not been named, although the front-runner remains Ch. 4’s afternoon anchor, Shiba Russell.
The local TV icon spent her final show aside longtime co-anchor Chuck Scarborough, who called Simmons “funny, unpredictable, dangerous and always there when you and I needed her there to share the news.”
As tears welled in Simmons’ eyes, Scarborough called their tenure together “as close as we’re going to get to forever” and a video of Simmons’ highlights – and some of her lowlights – played.
The look back included clips of Simmons’ interviews, her on-air F-bomb and her groundhog impressions.
View more videos at: http://nbcnewyork.com.
“Shut the front door,” she said after the video played, causing her on-air colleagues to laugh.
“I thought you were going to cry,” Scarborough said.
“I’ve been crying for two weeks … This week I was thinking, somebody’s made a mistake, you know.”
Simmons, 69, said she hopes to be employed somewhere else at some point, “even if it’s once a week.”
Mayor Bloomberg added to the day’s poignancy, issuing a proclamation making June 15, 2012 Sue Simmons Day.
The individual stories aired in Friday’s newscast seemed immaterial, really. Obama administration fighting illegal immigration. Coast Guard rescue. No-show MTA jobs.
The news on this night was the newscaster.
Simmons’ final newscast featured pre-taped celebrity salutes from Joan Rivers, Andy Cohen and Bloomberg, who called her “a quintessential New Yorker.”
Cohen labeled Simmons the “realest housewife in New York City,” and likened her to the Statue of Liberty in terms of her significance to New Yorkers.
Other spots featured late-night hosts Jay Leno and Jimmy Fallon, with Fallon calling Sue and Chuck one of the “top celebrity couples, like Liz and Dick, Heidi and Spencer … and Kim and Kanye.”
Sports icons such as Doc Gooden, Mark Messier, David Wright, Derek Jeter and Tom Coughlin also appeared in pre-taped spots.
Simmons received a bouquet of flowers – “32 roses for 32 years” – midway through the newscast, and a shot of the Mets’ scoreboard, reading “Thank you to News 4 NY’s Sue Simmons for an incredible three decades” appeared on-screen.
View more videos at: http://nbcnewyork.com.
Yes, there was a tape error during the newscast – a still image of Rivers appeared where a news teaser was supposed to show. The blunder was fitting, really, as Simmons has gained YouTube notoriety for her mistakes and slip-ups.
There were no other notable blunders on Friday’s show, simply memories and well wishes.
As the clock ticked past 11:30 p.m., Chuck by her side, Simmons blew a final kiss to the camera, and then the feed cut to “Tonight Show With Jay Leno” – the end of a newscast, the end of an era.