Bill Beutel

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Bill Beutel in 1995 on Eyewitness News.

William Charles Beutel, Jr. (Born 1930 in Cleveland, Ohio) is a retired American anchor and reporter. The son of a dentist Beutel had a lifelong dream of becoming a reporter. His boyhood idol was the late CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow. Beutel graduated from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire after a stint in the Army and studied law at the University of Michigan Law School. While Beutel was in law school, he wrote Murrow a letter saying, "I very much wanted to be a radio journalist." Beutel received a letter back advising him to go to the Columbia School of Journalism.

His first radio job was in Cleveland before moving to CBS Radio in New York City in 1957.

Beutel moved to ABC on October 22, 1962 as a reporter with ABC News and as anchor at the network's New York flagship, WABC-TV. The station had just opened up its first newsroom and created a one-hour 6 pm newscast called "The Big News." WABC was considered late to the game behind WNBC-TV and WCBS-TV. Beutel was doing both local and network news at a mere $20,000 a year.

Beutel left his WABC duties for two years in April 1968 to join ABC News full time as their London bureau chief. In 1970, he got a call from Al Primo, who had taken over as news director at WABC after Beutel left. Primo had brought the Eyewitness News format, in which the reporters directly presented their stories, along with him from KYW-TV in Philadelphia. He wanted Beutel to return to New York as co-anchor alongside Roger Grimsby, who had succeeded Beutel as WABC's main anchor. Primo remembered Beutel's solo anchor run in the early '60s. Since Grimsby had already established a powerful presence after just two years in New York, Primo wanted a co-anchor "who could be his own man." Beutel assured Primo he could be.

Beutel rejoined WABC-TV in September 28, 1970 as Roger Grimsby's co-anchor on Eyewitness News. Within three months, Beutel and Grimsby became two of the most influential personalities in TV news history. They made Eyewitness News the most talked about news program in the country. The two worked together for 16 years, most of which was spent going back and forth with WCBS for first place in the New York ratings. WABC briefly fell to last place in the early 1980s, leading to Grimsby's controversial firing in 1986. Beutel was joined by several other co-anchors, including Kaity Tong, Tracy Egan, Roz Abrams and Ernie Anastos. During that time, WABC shot back to first place and has held it ever since.

In January 6, 1975, Beutel along with co-host Stephanie Edwards had a failed attempt at starting a new morning show for ABC News called AM America. The show was replaced in November 3, 1975 by Good Morning America hosted by David Hartman and Nancy Dussault.

Beutel was reportedly married four times. Once to Gail Wilder, his second wife was Guiding Light soap actress, Lynn Deerfield in 1975, followed by a brief four month marriage to Cassie in 1977, and finally in 1980, Beutel married Adair Atwell, a former lobbyist for the tobacco industry. He has four children and eight grandchildren. His son, Peter works as an oil analyst at Cameron Hanover.

Beutel's last co-anchor at the station was Diana Williams. Williams anchored the 11 p.m. newscast with Beutel for nearly ten years and joined him for the last stretch of his anchor duties on Eyewitness News at 6 p.m. Beutel was replaced on WABC's 11p.m. and 6 p.m. Eyewitness News newscast in 1999 and 2001, respectively, by Bill Ritter. In all, Beutel served as an anchor at WABC for a total of 35 years, the last 31 of those continuously--the longest run in New York television history. Beutel retired from television and WABC after 41 years in 2003. As of 2005, Beutel's current health is failing from alzheimers disease.

Trademark sign off was "Good Luck, and be well."