New York ? TV anchormen are human after all.

This should come as news to no one. But lately it’s been an ongoing story at the Big Three evening newscasts.

In November, Dan Rather announced he was leaving the “CBS Evening News” anchor desk after 24 years radiating all-too-human traits considered wrong for an anchor: He was sometimes sentimental. Testy. Corny, with those down-home Ratherisms. Prone to memorable mishaps. And — some of his critics insisted — he was brazenly left-wing.

Even so, the end was triggered not by Rather’s performance on the “Evening News,” but by his role last September in a bungled scoop for “60 Minutes Wednesday” (where the 73-year-old Rather now appears as a full-time correspondent).

“I made a mistake,” he told viewers when the expose on President Bush’s military service was falling apart. For Rather, it was a torturous admission of journalistic lapses seldom seen in his career: “I didn’t dig hard enough, long enough, didn’t ask enough of the right questions.”

Of course, to err is human. So is getting sick. But viewers count on the Big Three anchormen not only to be error-free but also exempt from any physical infirmity.

That’s why Peter Jennings shocked the public with the news of his lung cancer. Flash! Whatever his polish and smarts, this guy is painfully human.

The solo anchor of ABC’s “World News Tonight” for 22 years, Jennings is the last of a troika that was locked in place in the early 1980s. With Rather’s departure a month ago and Tom Brokaw’s long-planned retirement last December from “NBC Nightly News,” Jennings represented the sort of stability neither of his rival newscasts could boast. He was eager to make the most of it and reclaim the ratings crown from first-place “Nightly News.”

Now this.

“There will be good days and bad,” Jennings said last week in a scratchy voice that sounded only distantly like his, during a taped statement on “World News Tonight” (Elizabeth Vargas was filling in as anchor).

Ahead for him: a chemotherapy regimen and, when he’s up to it, continued duty anchoring the newscast.

“Almost 10 million Americans are already living with cancer,” he pointed out.

At ABC, Peter Jennings, whether on-camera or off-, is breaking this story as he fights to get better: There are things in life even more urgent than the news.