Morning anchor Johnathon O’Halloran, 28, used an Instagram post on Monday, September 14, 2026, to tell viewers that the next day’s edition of “6 News at Sunrise” would be his last at NBC affiliate WJAC-TV, wrapping up more than two years behind the desk at the Johnstown, Pennsylvania, station.
“It’s bittersweet to say that tomorrow, Tuesday, will be my final day at WJAC. Over the last two years and some months, I’ve been honored to sit at the desk for a station with such a rich history and to get to know so many wonderful people across this ten-county community,” he wrote on Instagram.
“To everyone at home, thank you for trusting me to be a part of your day and to keep you informed about the stories that matter most,” he continued. “It’s a responsibility I’ve never taken lightly, and I’m incredibly grateful for the memories and experiences I’ve made here.”
“I’m excited for what’s next, but for now, I hope you’ll join me one more time Tuesday morning on 6 News at Sunrise,” he added, closing the post with, “Thank you for everything.” The post explained nothing about why he was leaving, and no future employer has been identified, although the anchor has since hinted that he will announce something soon.
A second Instagram post, written the morning of his final broadcast and not previously reported, put that reveal within reach. “My final send off this morning on 6 News at Sunrise,” the post opens. “I came here in June of 2024 without knowing a soul, and you immediately accepted me into your community. I’ll always be grateful for that. I’ve come to meet so many of you, who were always so kind.” He added: “While I’m excited for what’s next, and I’ll have more on that in the coming days.”
The sign-off post ended with a message aimed at the region: “Please know this area will forever have a special place in my heart, and no matter where I go, I’ll always be rooting for the amazing people of these ten counties I’ve had the privilege of calling home.”
Two Years at the Sunrise Desk
O’Halloran arrived at WJAC in June 2024 and grew into one of the recognizable faces on the station’s early-morning newscast, which serves a 10-county stretch of west-central Pennsylvania that includes Punxsutawney. “Today marks two years for me at WJAC! Crazy how time flies!” he posted in June. The farewell post had gone up the previous evening; he worked his last studio shift on Tuesday, September 15.
From Woodbridge to the Anchor Desk
Woodbridge, New Jersey, is where he was raised, and Xavier University in Cincinnati awarded him a bachelor’s degree in communications and digital media in 2020. Two mascot suits — D’Artagnan the Musketeer and the Blue Blob — belonged to him for four of those college years. Radio came before television for him: he worked as a producer and filled in as a sports talk host.
His job before Johnstown was in New York City, as an assignment editor at WPIX. Donald Trump’s civil fraud and hush money cases fell to him, according to his station biography, along with the arrest of an alleged Long Island serial killer, the 2022 Twin Parks apartment fire in the Bronx and the 2022 Sunset Park subway attack.
That biography also lists an Emmy, and it is a specific one. An in-depth piece he produced on an alleged cancer cluster at Colonia High School in New Jersey earned him a New York Emmy Award in 2023. The story drew national attention after more than 100 former students and staff reported brain tumors. State environmental and health officials went on to test the school grounds in 2022, and those tests found no radiological hazards. Woodbridge Township contains Colonia, and it is the place where O’Halloran grew up. The award is a regional New York Emmy rather than one of the national primetime or news and documentary Emmys.
A Second Job in New York Radio
Pennsylvania mornings accounted for only part of O’Halloran’s workload. He has kept anchoring newscasts for WOR 710 and iHeartRadio in New York, and that dual role sent him back and forth between a big-city radio newsroom and a small-market television desk.
Special coverage marking the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks was an assignment he called an honor, and he explained that he grew up close to New York City and that the events of that day rank among his earliest memories. A pretrial hearing in the case against Luigi Mangione also drew him to New York, by his own account on social media earlier this year, and a judge there ruled certain evidence out of the trial to come.
What the Exit Leaves Behind
WJAC’s website was still carrying O’Halloran’s staff biography as of September 23, identifying him as “Morning Anchor” with no mention of his departure. The Sinclair Inc. station’s on-air roster also still includes morning anchor Valory Myers, chief meteorologist Caitlin Westerholm and news anchors Sean Eiler and Jen Johnson, plus meteorologists, multimedia journalists and a Centre County reporter.
In a market the size of Johnstown, the departure of a young anchor lands hard. Morning newscasts in smaller markets are typically where reporters assemble the reel that lands them a bigger job, and O’Halloran was running two tracks at once — local television in Pennsylvania and radio news in New York. Those jobs had already placed him in front of national stories even as he read local headlines at dawn.
Congratulations piled up in the comments beneath the farewell post. “I’m so proud of you, my friend!” one wrote. A commenter on Facebook struck a more wistful note, saying it was sad to watch him leave and that the region ought to be able to keep its young talent, though the same commenter conceded that a person wanting to move a career forward made sense. The remark caught the double edge of the news: a send-off for the anchor, and one more empty chair at a small-market morning desk.