KTTV Anchor Harris to Return Tonight

KTTV news anchor Chris Harris is a seasoned veteran who has seen and heard it all, but he expects his return on tonight’s 10 p.m. newscast on Channel 11 to be unique.

The last time Harris appeared on “Fox News at 10,” in mid-June, he suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized while the newscast continued without him. He underwent quadruple-bypass surgery last month, and has been recuperating at home.

The attack came less than a month after Harris pulled double-duty at the station by anchoring gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Rodney G. King beating trial while continuing to co-anchor the nightly news. His workday averaged about 16 hours.

Harris, 49, said that he and his doctors don’t know whether the long, intense days contributed to the heart attack.

In addition to working hard, he smoked and “did not have the best of diets. They said I probably got overtired during the trial, but they don’t know how much of a factor that was.”

But he does know that he is eager to get back in his anchor chair.

“It’s been a long eight weeks,” Harris said during an interview at his Newberry Park home. “I’m really looking forward to getting back.”

Even though he’s planning to take it a little easier, he said he has no regrets about taking on the brutal workload.

“It was the high point of my career,” Harris said. “I wouldn’t change any of the stuff I did or we did.”

But the attack and his recuperation has given him a new outlook on life: “It was a wake-up call for a number of things. I’ve gotten a real appreciation for people and things in my life that I came very close to losing.”

Harris changed in other dramatic ways during his ordeal: He lost 25 pounds, has quit smoking and is on a prescribed diet.

KTTV news director Jose Rios said that the station is ecstatic to have Harris back. “We just wanted to make sure he was fine,” Rios said. “We didn’t want to rush it, but he’s made a remarkable recovery.”

Recalling the June 18 incident, Harris said that he felt ill about an hour before the newscast. “I had eaten some spicy food at dinner, and I just chalked it up to heartburn,” he said.

But just before he went on, Harris was almost overcome by “this overwhelming feeling of awful. There was a great deal of pressure in my stomach, in my chest. It was the worst feeling I’ve ever had, times 10.”

Harris insisted on going on with the newscast, however, thinking the pain would go away. It didn’t. “At 10:20, the executive producer, Burton Jablin, said, ‘That’s it, you’re done.’ At the same time, he had the assignment desk call 911.”

Paramedics arrived and stabilized Harris before taking him to the hospital. His surgery took place a month later.

Harris said that he plans to take it a bit easier as he eases back into his anchor post. “I’m still figuring out my stamina level, and I’ll just play it by ear,” he said. “But I feel great.”