http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050405/ap_en_tv/tv_jennings_cancer By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer NEW YORK - Peter Jennings, the chief ABC News anchorman for more than 20 years, has been diagnosed with lung cancer and will begin outpatient treatment next week, the network said Tuesday. Jennings, 66, told ABC News staff members of his diagnosis Tuesday morning and said he will continue to anchor the broadcast when he feels up to it as he begins chemotherapy. He last anchored "World News Tonight" Friday and was too ill to work Saturday during the network's special report on Pope John Paul II's death. "There will be good days and bad, which means some days I may be cranky and some days really cranky," he told ABC News employees in an e-mail. Charles Gibson, who's in Rome for the pope's funeral, and Elizabeth Vargas will be Jennings' primary substitutes on the evening news. Jennings is the last of the anchor troika that dominated broadcast network news divisions over the last two decades. NBC's Tom Brokaw stepped down last year and CBS's Dan Rather left the evening news last month. A former foreign correspondent based in Rome and London, the urbane Jennings and "World News Tonight" dominated the ratings during the late 1980s and early 1990s, before being surpassed by Brokaw. His broadcast is now a close second to NBC's "Nightly News" with Brian Williams. He has been feeling ill for the past several months. Following the tsunami in December, he did not travel to the stricken region, with ABC explaining at the time that he had an upper respiratory infection and was under doctor's orders not to travel. He did go to Iraq in January for the elections. Jennings is a former smoker who gave up the habit several years ago, the network said. He anchored ABC's evening newscast for two years in the 1960s, then joined a multi-anchor format in 1978. ABC abandoned the approach in 1983 after Frank Reynolds died of cancer and Jennings has been the sole anchor since then.
I wish him the best of luck. He's definitely my favorite among the major news anchors. Now I don't really have a favorite anchor, since I'm fairly indiferent towards the other anchors.
That sucks, I like Jennings. I wonder if he's a smoker or just one of those unlucky non-smokers that got lung cancer.
I wish him well. If I watch news, I usually watch Fox, but Peter Jennings has been around so long, he's like an evening staple.
Lets see.... He's 66 and he quit smoking just a few years ago. It's safe to say that he probably had been smoking for 40-50 years and the cumulative effect had caused the cancer.
Probably. Though, like MadMax, my grandmother also eventually died of lung cancer. Though, she was 84 and smoked for 4 or 5 years in her late teens, so who knows.
I once heard that Peter Jennings was a high school drop out. Can anyone confirm this is true? If so, who needs school? The man is as eloquent as you can get.
Andy Kaufman died of lung cancer and never took a puff of anything. Cancer has as much to do with genetics as it does with behavior.
Yeah, it's true. Though I read on his IMDB page that he went to Carleton University in Canada and Rider College (now university) in NJ. He's originally from Canada, I didn't know that. I don't know how he went to college, there's no mention of a GED or Canadian equivalent. I also read that he always did poorly in school and never showed any interest in formal education. Pretty amazing how far he went.
maybe for breast cancer or prostate cancer, but the last statistic I heard was that 7 of every 8 cancer cases are in a smoker...
I saw Peter Jennings piece at the end of ABC Nightly News today and he said he quit smoking 20 years ago but had a relapse during 9/11.
