Bill Ritter Revealed An Alzheimer's Diagnosis On His Last ABC7 Broadcast Friday Night
Bill Ritter anchored the 6 PM Eyewitness News on ABC7 in New York for the last time on Friday, ending a broadcast career at the station that stretched back to 1998 the way he began almost everything he did across nearly three decades in that anchor chair, by telling New York the truth.
The truth on Friday was that he has Alzheimer's disease and he will not be anchoring anymore.
"After a series of tests, my doctors have told me I have Alzheimer's," Ritter said during the broadcast. He added:
"It's 'early stage' Alzheimer's, and they say the treatments I'm getting are keeping it at bay. For now. But there is no guarantee, because there's no cure yet for Alzheimer's. So, unless someone finds an amazing cure, and soon, tonight will be the last newscast I anchor."
He is 76 years old. He has been at WABC since 1998. He has been anchoring the 6 PM newscast since 2001.
He will continue to work at Eyewitness News in a new role focused on covering Alzheimer's and related diseases, because he knows this disease, has known it longer than most people know most things, and has something to say about it that no one who has not lived it can say.
The 1998 Diagnosis Ritter Always Remembers
Ritter's father died of Alzheimer's in June 1998. That was the same month Ritter joined WABC.
He has spent 28 years anchoring the news in New York while carrying the specific private knowledge of someone who watched a parent lose their mind to a disease for which there is still no cure.
It shaped what he chose to fight for outside the newsroom, he has emceed Alzheimer's awareness events alongside colleague Mike Marza, whose grandfather died from the disease, and it is shaping what he chooses to do now that the disease has found him.
"I am not a stranger to this disease," Ritter said on Friday. "My dad died with it in June 1998. I have since been active in the fight to stop Alzheimer's, and I will continue that, along with my friend Mike Marza, who took my place last year on Eyewitness News at 5 and 11. Mike's grandfather died from this disease, and we have emceed together many Alzheimer's awareness events to spread the word."
Ritter's new role at Eyewitness News, he is not leaving, he is changing what he covers, will focus on what he called "the rising tide of Alzheimer's, and other similar diseases, including how it's affecting patients and their families, how the price of treatment and the price of caring for patients is simply unaffordable and how this country might begin to change that."
He has been covering the news for the people of New York for 28 years. The news he now has to cover is his own.
The Career That Built The Relationship
Ritter came to WABC from the West Coast, where he had started at the Los Angeles Times as a print journalist before moving to television, NBC's San Diego affiliate and then KTTV Fox 11 in Los Angeles.
He arrived at WABC in 1998, began anchoring the 11 PM newscast almost immediately and moved to the 6 PM anchor position in 2001, which he held continuously for 25 years.
New York is not an easy television market to build trust in.
The city has more media options, more sophisticated audiences and higher competition for attention than any other local news market in the country.
The anchors who last in New York, who become the person that viewers expect to see when they turn on the evening news, whose absence is noticed and whose presence is comforting, are not the most polished or the most produced.
They are the ones who seem, through the camera, to be telling you something rather than performing something. Ritter was that kind of anchor.
WABC General Manager Marilu Galvez described him in the terms that a station manager uses for a person who is genuinely irreplaceable. "For decades, Bill Ritter has covered and led New Yorkers through the stories that matter most. A defining presence at ABC7, he has done so with exceptional insight, integrity, and, most of all — heart, earning the love and respect of viewers and colleagues alike."
He covered September 11. He covered Hurricane Sandy. He covered the 2008 financial crisis and the 2020 pandemic.
He covered all of it from the same chair, on the same channel, in the same city, for a quarter century.
The note the WABC website published about Friday's broadcast carried Ritter's own byline. He wrote his own exit.
The Words He Left With
The final words of a broadcast are usually a co-anchor handoff, a tease for the late news or a weather update.
The final words of Bill Ritter's final broadcast were the ones he chose.
"I am going to so miss reporting the news to you. With the truth, and with facts, no matter where they fall. It has been my honor to do that."
Then, "For now, I wish you health and peace, and let's take care of each other."
New York local news does not often produce moments like that one. A man who has been in people's living rooms for 28 years, telling them what happened in the city they live in, finding out that his brain is beginning the process of forgetting, and choosing to tell his audience the truth about it on the way out the door, with the same directness he brought to every other story he covered, is not a common thing.
It is the specific act of a journalist who means what he says about facts and truth mattering, even when the facts are his own.
He will keep working. He will cover the disease that killed his father and that has now claimed his anchor chair.
The Alzheimer's Association can be reached at 1-800-272-3900 for anyone seeking information or support for themselves or a loved one.