Pat Collins is retiring from NBC4 after 36 years

Legendary NBC4 reporter Pat Collins is retiring.

Why it issues: Generations of Washingtonians have grown up watching Collins ship the information on the ratings-leading NBC4. He has a one-of-a-kind information supply that has transfixed and entertained locals for greater than 36 years on the channel.

A few of his biggest hits:

❄️ His well-known “snow stick” guided viewers by way of numerous winter storms. He tells Axios that he hopes the “Pat Collins snow stick lives on perpetually.”

😱 A vengeful vandal who mistakenly spray-painted a girl’s automobile with “Mike is a cheater.” Pat’s report was a banger music video.

🍇 That point he wore a grape costume to interview “banana man” — a highschool child who was suspended for sporting a banana costume.

• “Woodward and Bernstein, they took down a president,” he stated on his thirty fifth anniversary final yr. “Simply bear in mind, that is the man who dressed as a grape to save lots of a banana.”

The large image: Collins, 76, reported on the whole lot from crime to the quirky. It’s a giant loss for native TV loyalists, particularly after anchor Doreen Gentzler’s retirement final month after 33 years on the station.

• A D.C. native, Collins grew up on H Road NE. He acquired his begin in newspapers as a youngster earlier than working in TV for 49 years.

Driving the information: Collins tells Axios that he took a voluntary buyout provide, as a result of “you are not sure that there can be one other probability for a proposal like that six months from now or a yr from now.”

• NBC Common tells Axios the voluntary early retirement presents had been just lately introduced throughout the enormous media firm. Eligible staffers needed to have labored on the firm for at the very least 10 years and be 57 years or older. Buyouts had been supplied to fewer than 2,000 staff out of a 74,000 complete
• The media trade is coping with promoting headwinds because of uncertainty across the financial system, forcing cuts and cost-saving measures.

What they’re saying: “I do not know many 76-year-old avenue reporters in tv,” Collins stated. “It is laborious work.”