Veteran WPIX anchor Kaity Tong will retire on Aug. 30

Kaity Tong, one of New York TV's longest-running news anchors and a 34-year veteran of WPIX/11, will retire at the end of August, the station announced Tuesday.

Tong, 79, who anchors the 5 and 10 p.m. weekend newscasts at Ch. 11, was diagnosed with stage 1 lung cancer in 2023; a lifelong nonsmoker, she was off the air during treatment, which she later described as "harder than I expected" in a Newsday interview.

In a memo announcing her departure, Ch. 11 managing editor Patrick Mason wrote: "[H]er mentorship helped shape the careers of so many up-and-coming journalists, from anchors and reporters to producers and writers. Her decision to retire will affect each of us in our own way, but we know that the mark she has left on us, and the entirety of the New York City viewing area, is indeed indelible."

This onetime Ph.D. candidate who instead became a radio reporter and TV anchor in California, later joined WABC/7 in 1980 as its hugely popular 5, 6 and 11 p.m. co-anchor. Since 1992, she has been at PIX. But it was at Ch. 7 where she became one of the best-known anchors in New York TV news history, working alongside a few other superstars of local news — Tom Snyder, Ernie Anastos, Bill Beutel and Roger Grimsby.

Tong, who was born in China and raised in Washington, D.C., was wrapping her doctorate program at Stanford University in Chinese and Japanese literature in the late '70s when she took a summer job at an all-news radio station in San Francisco. That led to a TV reporter job in that city, then as an anchor in Sacramento. She was hired at WABC/7 in 1981 and, over the next 10 years, became among the most popular anchors on local news.

That run ended, abruptly and without explanation, when Tong was dropped by the station. A coalition was launched to protest her firing, and on April 18, 1991, 200 supporters turned up at Ch. 7 headquarters on Manhattan's Columbus Avenue to demand her reinstatement.

Tong joined Ch. 11 in 1992 and has remained there since. As Mason accurately noted, "You would be hard pressed to find anyone in the New York City area who doesn’t immediately associate PIX 11 with Kaity — a powerhouse name in an industry that can change in a New York minute."

Neither Tong nor Mason could be immediately reached for comment.