A noted author and aviator, Scarborough has been with television station WNBC since 1974. He has been an anchorman longer than anyone in New York television history except WABC's Bill Beutel, and already holds the record for the longest unbroken tenure behind an English language anchor desk in New York, as WXTV's Rafael Pineda beats Scarborough by two years, having started with his station in 1972. He is the highest paid anchor in New York City making $3 million a year. He has occasionally appeared on NBC News and in the 1980s often anchored prime time NBC Network newsbreaks.
Scarborough has won 31 Emmy Awards, and was one of the first inductees into the New York State Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame in 2005. He was inducted alongside Sue Simmons, his 11 p.m. co-anchor. The pair has been anchoring together since 1980, longer than any other anchor team in New York City television history.
A native of Pittsburgh and a graduate of the The University of Southern Mississippi, he served in the United States Air Force, and currently has a Commercial pilot certificate. Before coming to WNBC, he worked at WDAM in Hattiesburg, Mississippi as well as WNAC (now WHDH) in Boston. In his final commentary on WNAC, he identified the issue of race as the most important challenge facing Boston. A scant few months later, Boston erupted into racial unrest as the result of a federal court order to end its policy of de facto racial segregation in the public schools.
He was the host of the syndicated program Images - A Year in Review in the late 1980s and also anchored the NBC News Digest for NBC News during the 1980s.
Aftershock was made into a made for television movie, Aftershock: Earthquake in New York in 1999, airing on the CBS television network.