A sign-off decades in the making.
Kaity Tong, the beloved New York PIX11 news figure whose name has long been woven into the city’s television landscape, announced Tuesday night that she is retiring, bringing an acclaimed broadcasting career of more than 60 years to a close.
Tong, an Emmy-winning journalist who joined PIX11 in 1992, will deliver her final newscast on Aug. 30, the station said.
“Journalist, anchor, icon, legend, friend, mentor. A few of the words that describe our beloved Kaity Tong,” PIX11 Managing Editor Patrick Mason said, according to the outlet.
“After more than 34 years at WPIX, Kaity has opted to move into a much-deserved retirement at the end of August. You would be hard-pressed to find anyone in the New York City area who doesn’t immediately associate PIX11 with Kaity. A powerhouse name in an industry that can change in a New York minute.”
Tong was born in China and moved to the United States when she was 4. Though she would become one of New York’s most recognizable broadcast journalists, she has said television news was never part of her original plan. Her path into the industry began unexpectedly while she was pursuing a doctorate at Stanford University.
“I never aspired to be a broadcast journalist. No, I wanted to be a college professor,” Tong said during her induction into the New York State Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame in October 2025.
Journalism, however, was already part of her family legacy. Following the example of her mother and uncle, both respected journalists, Tong took a summer job in the 1970s as a morning editor and producer at KCBS All-News Radio in San Francisco.
The seasonal job turned into a year-long employment at the station as she pushed aside graduate work, never finishing her doctoral dissertation in Chinese and Japanese studies, according to her online biography.
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Tong quickly moved into television reporting, joining San Francisco’s KPIX-TV as a writer before being turned into a reporter “on the spot” in 1976.
Following a stint at Sacramento’s KCRA, Tong moved to New York, where she became a correspondent and weekend co-anchor for WABC in 1981.
Tong was named co-anchor for 5 p.m. and 11 p.m. broadcasts just two years into her tenure at the station.
In 1991, Tong departed WABC and joined WPIX, where she has been since, starting as the top female anchor and the weekday 10 p.m. news show.
Tong later moved to weekend coverage, where she has been, anchoring the 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. broadcasts.
She has been recognized throughout her career, earning awards and honors for her work in every city she lived in.
Along with her recent NYSBA Hall of Fame induction, Tong has won several Emmy Awards, including for Outstanding Event Coverage for the 2003 “9/11 America Remembers.”
She was named the 2008 Best Newscaster in Local Television News by New York Press Magazine, received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor in 1992 and the New York Women’s Agenda Star Award in 1993.
In 2023, Tong revealed she had been diagnosed with Stage 1 lung cancer.
She underwent surgery to remove the tumor at Memorial Sloan Kettering and was declared “cancer-free” she said at the time.
Married and divorced twice, Tong shares her son, Phillip, with her ex-husband, Richard Long.
