Longtime WABC-TV/ABC7 news anchor Bill Ritter is stepping down from the “Eyewitness News” chair after being diagnosed with early stage Alzheimer’s. Ritter announced on Friday’s 6 p.m. newscast that it would be his last. Ritter has anchored the station’s 6 p.m. “Eyewitness News” broadcast since 2001.
“After a series of tests, my doctors have told me I have Alzheimer’s,” Ritter said during Friday’s newscast, according to WABC. “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.”
Ritter will continue to work at WABC/Eyewitness News, but focus on health issues, including “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 said.
The anchor has been with WABC since 1998; before that he was at the Los Angeles Times, as well as L.A. stations KTTV and KCAL, and San Diego’s KNSD. He then moved on to national, anchoring “Good Morning America Sunday” and working on “20/20.”
