Tony Parsons is retiring as a CBC-TV newscaster next month.
The legendary broadcaster co-hosts his final newscast on Dec. 20 with CBC News Vancouver when his current contract expires, the network announced Tuesday.
“I have thoroughly enjoyed my time with CBC News Vancouver, an organization I have always held in the highest regard,” said Parsons, who has covered some of the biggest stories in B.C. during a broadcasting career spanning more than 50 years.
Parsons, who was inducted into the Canadian Broadcast Hall of Fame in 2009, will be returning with his wife to live full-time in Victoria, where, he says, he plans to pursue his personal and career goals.
“I will truly miss the team at CBC Vancouver,” Parsons said, noting they have become “like family” since he joined them in April 2010 as co-host of the station’s supper-hour broadcast.
The feeling was mutual, said Johnny Michel, senior managing director for CBC British Columbia.
“When I first spoke to Tony, we both saw this as a short engagement,” said Michel, a longtime friend who worked with Parsons for several years when they both worked for Western International Communications and BCTV.
While Parsons helped ratings-wise, he said ratings aren’t the only measure of success.
“Tony brought tremendous prestige into our newsrooms, opened new doors and created new relationships,” Michel said in an interview. “It’s been an honour and a privilege having him in our midst. He’s one of the classiest human beings in our industry.”
Parsons, who was once Canada’s most-watched anchor while at Global B.C., formerly BCTV, where he worked for more than three decades, also brought star power to CHEK News three years ago.
At age 71, the longtime broadcaster made his debut on the largely employee-owned Victoria station as anchor of its 10 p.m. newscast on March 15, 2010 — three months after anchoring his final newscast on Global’s News Hour.
He later began anchoring CBC News: Vancouver, with the final 30 minutes of the 90-minute 5 p.m. newscast simulcast on CHEK, which it still is today.
When he was doing double-duty, Parsons would fly to Victoria to host CHEK’s 10 p.m. news after doing the Vancouver newscast.
“It was great to have this broadcast legend at CHEK,” recalled CHEK News director Rob Germain, who worked with Parsons at BCTV before offering him the gig. “He helped us forge that relationship with CBC that continues to this day,” referring to a resources and content-sharing deal CBC and CHEK entered into that year.
Parsons’ involvement with CHEK News, which since 2009 has been an independent station owned by employees and local investors under the CHEK Media Group banner, was inspired by his admiration for its employees, he said at the time.
He said he was impressed they had “a little fire in their bellies” — enough to put up their own money to save the station from potential extinction after previous owner, Canwest Global Communications, announced plans to shut it down in 2009.