Jim Gardner is signing off from the 11 p.m. news on channel 6. Tonight, Tuesday, will be his last show.

He announced this move last year, and will CONTINUE to solo anchor the 6 p.m. for the remainder of 2022 before retiring. He’s doing the same thing as Angelo Cataldi and cutting back his work load before calling it a career.

After myriad guesses at who his replacement will be, Action News is staying in-house with the equally-legendary Rick Williams:

Williams currently does the 5 p.m. show on Action News and the 10 p.m. show on PHL-17.

Replacing a ~40-year veteran with a ~25-year veteran says a lot about WPVI, doesn’t it? Imagine staying in-house with a guy who has been there since the 1980s. Most of the other TV stations in town (like my former employer, Eyewitness News) are trotting out people you’ve never even heard of. WPVI did it the right way, by building this amazing roster of talent and keeping the approach simple. They mastercrafted the idea of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” which is why they can plug and play with respected folks who paid their dues 15 years ago.

If you think about it, Action News is the 2001-2002 Detroit Red Wings. Jim Gardner is Steve Yzerman. Rick Williams is Chris Chelios. Cecily Tynan is Sergei Fedorov and I guess we would say that Adam Joseph is Brendan Shanahan. We just need to find matches for Igor Larionov, Brett Hull, Luc Robitaille, and Nicklas Lidstrom. Ducis Rodgers can be Pavel Datsyuk. Damn that team was STACKED.

Congrats to Rick Williams. Transitioning from Jim Gardner to Rick Williams is the easiest transition of all time.