Pat Kiernan
2 min read
Pat Kiernan (born November 20, 1968, in Calgary, Alberta) is a Canadian-American television journalist and host who has served as the morning anchor of NY1 News in New York City since 1997. He began his broadcast career in 1988 at CKRA-FM in Edmonton while studying business at the University of Alberta, then transitioned to television at Edmonton's CFRN News and later CITV before moving to New York to join Time Warner's NY1. He anchored the channel for twelve consecutive hours on September 11, 2001. From 2000 to 2004 he co-anchored CNNfn's The Money Gang alongside Christine Romans, Amanda Lang, and Ali Velshi. Kiernan is widely recognized in New York for his deadpan "In the Papers" feature, a daily summary of the city's newspapers.
Kiernan appeared in two entries in the Ghostbusters franchise, playing real-life broadcast journalists in each. In Ghostbusters: Answer the Call (2016), he portrayed NY1 News Anchor #1, the journalist whose on-air report coined the team's name "Ghostbusters." He filmed his scene with Bill Murray in a converted warehouse in Boston; the two actors spent roughly 40 minutes on scripted and improvised material, with Murray playing an evasive interviewee to Kiernan's straight-man anchor. He returned to the franchise in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024) as the News Anchor covering the events unfolding in New York.
Beyond the Ghostbusters films, Kiernan has made screen appearances in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) and the Showtime drama Billions, typically cast as a New York television journalist.
