OUR CITY. OUR STORY. Podcast Live from 30 Rock: Chuck Scarborough [Start of recorded material] 00:00:00 Chuck Scarborough: It started with a phone call. My sister-in-law called to tell me that my brother, who was an NBC News cameraman, had been dispatched to the World Trade Center because a plane had just flown into it. My first thought was it must be an overcast, awful day and somebody was lost. They flew a small plane into the World Trade Center and this is going to be a big story in the news tonight. So I looked out the window and saw this crystal clear, perfect autumnal day. 00:00:28 And then as I was beginning to try to figure out what had happened, the second plane hit and I knew we were under attack. [Music playing] Will Thwaites: From the 9/11 Memorial Museum this is Our City. Our Story., a series where New Yorkers talk about their City and how September 11th changed that. I'm Will Thwaites. 00:00:56 So Chuck Scarborough, he's a New York staple. Chuck Scarborough: All right. Testing, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. Will Thwaites: For over four decades he's been a television news anchor in New York City, broadcasting from NBC's headquarters at 30 Rockefeller Center. That's where my cohost, Jenny Pachucki sat down to interview him. OUR CITY. OUR STORY. Podcast Live from 30 Rock: Chuck Scarborough Chuck Scarborough: You're in the famous studio, 3K. Jenny Pachucki: Which is not someplace I ever saw myself sitting. Will Thwaites: It's not really a place Scarborough saw himself sitting either; in an anchor's chair in this world famous studio in New York City. 00:01:26 In fact, Scarborough's whole story has got me thinking about what are the little happenings that land each of us where we are today? [Music playing] Will Thwaites: All right. So some backstory on Chuck Scarborough. He grew up in the Midwest, kind of all over it. His dad was in the Airforce, and then followed a few civilian jobs from Pennsylvania to Ohio, Ohio to Missouri. Chuck Scarborough: And there was a divorce. Will Thwaites: Which, ultimately, sent Scarborough back to live with his grandparents in Pennsylvania. 00:01:57 This all made for a childhood that was, as he puts it, a little bit checkered. Chuck Scarborough: I mean, it was very unusual. Divorce was quite uncommon. Jenny Pachucki: Right. OUR CITY. OUR STORY. Podcast Live from 30 Rock: Chuck Scarborough Chuck Scarborough: And moving wasn't as common back then, as it is now. Now we pick up and leave all the time. So I was sort of an outlier. Jenny Pachucki: Did you feel that socially? Chuck Scarborough: Sure. I didn't like the move. No kid wants to move. It meant that I was being uprooted pretty regularly, and having to reintroduce myself to a whole new set of contemporaries. 00:02:30 Children like regularity and consistency, and you have a group of friends you want to stay with. What it did, I think, was make me quite adaptable. And I didn't realize at the time it was probably laying the groundwork for a career in journalism, where one has to adapt in situations all of the time. [Music playing] 00:02:55 Will Thwaites: Now, before starting his broadcasting career, Scarborough followed in his father's footsteps and joined the Air Force. He was stationed in Biloxi, Mississippi, and was assigned to the division that handled intercontinental ballistic missiles; nukes, basically. Chuck Scarborough: I got tapped for instructor duty, so I was never sent to a hole in North Dakota to live for the next few years waiting to launch the missiles in an all-out nuclear holocaust. OUR CITY. OUR STORY. Podcast Live from 30 Rock: Chuck Scarborough Will Thwaites: But, instead, it was his job to help teach his fellow airmen. 00:03:22 Coincidentally, the Air Force was just starting to experiment with educational television, where Scarborough and his team would kinescope a lecture. Chuck Scarborough: That was the same as videotape now, only much more crude. Will Thwaites: And then they would show it to a classroom full of airmen. Now, this educational television idea, it was sort of a flop for the Air Force. Chuck Scarborough: But I had some brush with the machinery of television. 0:03:47 Will Thwaites: So by the time Scarborough left the service, he had the confidence to walk into the local ABC station there in Biloxi, Mississippi, and tell them that he might be useful. They agreed. And pretty soon he was the Production Manager of the station. One of the first things that Scarborough had to do in his new role at the ABC station was make sure that they started to cover more news. They needed to in order to keep their broadcasting license. 00:04:14 Chuck Scarborough: So I had to put together a little news department, a little three-man news department and start covering local news in Biloxi, Mississippi. Biloxi was, at the time, known as the Redneck Riviera. On Highway 90, along the Gulf Coast through Biloxi, was a strip joint, followed by a bar, followed by a restaurant, followed OUR CITY. OUR STORY. Podcast Live from 30 Rock: Chuck Scarborough by a liquor store, followed by a casino, most of which was illegal. We were the heart of the Bible Belt. Certainly, gambling was illegal. 00:04:43 Liquor was illegal. Both were available 24/7 because the local sheriff in Harrison County down there turned a blind eye for something under the table. And that was sort of a tradition down there. So when we went into the local news business we had what, in the Air Force, we would have called a target rich environment. We had stuff going on in this town you just wouldn't believe, and we started covering this. 00:05:08 And I realized very quickly that of all the things I could do with that little, new television station, using it as a journalistic tool was the most exciting and the most interesting. It resonated with me and I thought, "That's what I want to do. I'm going into broadcast journalism." [Music playing] Will Thwaites: It's at this point that Scarborough devotes his life to the news. He goes back to college and gets a degree in communications, while also working nights as a reporter anchor for the NBC affiliate in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. 00:05:41 Chuck Scarborough: Then I went to Atlanta, Georgia and I got a job as a reporter there. OUR CITY. OUR STORY. Podcast Live from 30 Rock: Chuck Scarborough Will Thwaites: Then from Atlanta to Boston, where he really solidified himself as a full-time news anchor. And, finally, from Boston to WNBC in New York City. Chuck Scarborough: And I've been in New York since 1974. New York was such a quantum leap from any other station in the country, from Boston or anywhere else, coming to 30 Rockefeller Plaza. You came in here tonight. 00:06:09 You see how dazzling it is when you walk into this edifice that was built for Rockefeller back in the Depression. Jenny Pachucki: I don't think I've ever been in a more seductive building, and I've lived here 14 years. Chuck Scarborough: I know. It is quite. And I've had the privilege of being here in the epicenter of broadcast journalism, at the home of the oldest network in the country since 1974, coming to work in this building every day. 00:06:35 Jenny Pachucki: How was it personally to develop an identity as a New Yorker? Where did you live? Where did you like to go? How did you get to know the City? Chuck Scarborough: I first got a little apartment on the Upper Eastside on 69th and Lexington. Gosh, I remember one of my first trips in to 30 Rockefeller Plaza I hailed a cab on Lexington Avenue. I looked very dapper. I was all dressed for work and I had my umbrella in my hand and I flagged down a Yellow Cab. That was back when they had checker cabs, back in the good, old days. OUR CITY. OUR STORY. Podcast Live from 30 Rock: Chuck Scarborough 00:07:06 But I had never been in one. And so I opened the door, turned around and backed into the backseat, and missed the seat entirely and tumbled over backward onto the floor in the backseat of the checker cab. And shouted up from the floor, "30 Rock." And the driver said, "Hey, aren't you that new guy on NBC?" Jenny Pachucki: I was going to say, I wonder if the driver recognized you. Chuck Scarborough: Very humiliating. So the very first thing I had to do, then, to become a New Yorker was learn how to get into a Yellow Cab with some dignity. [Music playing] 00:07:41 Chuck Scarborough: But New York is an extraordinary city, extraordinary in so many ways; its energy level, the diversity of the city. It's the epicenter of literature and broadcasting, finance and fashion. There is nothing like it. If you stay here for a while, it begins to become part of you and it kind of gets into the blood. 00:08:11 So I can't tell you when somebody who has not lived in New York, who comes here at the age of 30, as I did, begins to identify as a New Yorker, but it's insidious.