CHANCELLOR'S NO ANCHOR, BUT HE'S STILL IN THE WATER

Retirement hasn't kept NBC newsman John Chancellor off the air. Since leaving the evening news in May, Chancellor hasn't had as much time to write books as he planned. He remains the host of the business ethics series "Bookends" on PBS and sat in twice for Larry King on CNN. "I don't really know what `retire' means," Chancellor said in a story Saturday in The Times of Trenton, N.J. "I guess I do know people who've gone to Florida and played shuffleboard. I do remember some statistics on mortality, that people who lead active and busy lives and then just suddenly hit the shuffleboard route, they're gone in a couple years," he said. He covered every presidential election from Eisenhower-Stevenson to Bush-Dukakis. He was in Berlin when the wall was built and when it came down. Chancellor "would not exactly like to die with my boots on. . . . I'd like to die, instead, surrounded by my great-grandchildren. But not for a while."