BILL MCCREARY WAY (Queens)
Present name:None
Location:at the intersection of 120th Avenue and 219th Street
Honoree: Bill McCreary (1933-2021) was an Emmy Award-winning journalist and a former vice-president of Fox Television station WNYW-TV (Channel 5 in New York). As news director at radio station WLIB, he produced several documentaries on the civil rights movement and interviewed some of its most prominent figures. He was one of the first African American journalists in New York. A graduate of Seward Park High School and Baruch College, he served in the U.S. Army from 1953 to 1955. His first broadcasting jobs were in radio, as an announcer at WWRL in Queens, and a general-assignment reporter and news director at WLIB in Manhattan. He began reporting for WNEW on March 13, 1967, the first day of the station’s nightly newscast. He won a local Emmy for “Black News” and shared an Emmy for anchoring with John Roland on the 10 O’Clock News. He was hired in 1967 when the station, Channel 5, was owned by Metromedia and known as WNEW, and he remained a familiar on-air presence until he retired in 2000. As a co-anchor, Mr. McCreary helped build the station’s 10 O’Clock News into a ratings powerhouse. He became the managing editor and anchor of the weekly program “Black News” in 1970 and of “The McCreary Report” in 1987, when he was also named a vice president of Fox 5 News. (Miller)
LL:2022/54