In an interview with Puck’s Dylan Byers on Tuesday afternoon, longtime CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell announced she’d be resigning from the CBS Evening News after the November presidential election in order “to focus on major cross-platform interview specials” in what he nauseatingly dubbed a “new, Barbara Walters-ish role” for CBS.
O’Donnell released an open letter around the same time, telling colleagues that “[a]fter this year’s election, I’ve decided I will be leaving my role as anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News to take on a new position at the network.”
“We just celebrated an amazing five years together. I love what I do...I have spent 12 years in the anchor chair here at CBS News, connected to a daily broadcast and the rigors of a relentless news cycle. It’s time to do something different...I don’t need to tell you what a transformative time our business is facing. I see this as an opportunity,” she added.
Byers said CBS is unlikely to name “another high-paid, high-profile anchor,” but rather replace O’Donnell with “an ensemble cast with rotating anchors—making CBS the first network to relinquish the half-century-plus format of a singular, expensive anchor in the chair, signaling another retreat from the paradigm.”
Byers said this came thanks to “a new, long-term, sinecure-ish deal” in which she’ll relinquish both the title of anchor and managing editor for the third-place-rated network evening newscast.
He claimed speculation of O’Donnell’s exit “began after her May primetime interview special with Pope Francis, which she described as ‘a real lightbulb moment’” and “has an ambitious shortlist for additional interviews she hopes to land” and air across all CBS shows and platforms.
O’Donnell was announced on May 6, 2019 as anchor after nearly seven years as co-host of CBS This Morning and a litany of bias. She took the job thanks to the firing of Jeff Glor, who made the show the closest thing to a respectable, un-biased newscast.
Having left CBS This Morning ten days later, O’Donnell took time off before starting the PM gig on July 15, 2019 following two months of fill-ins, but hasn’t been able to move out of third place behind ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir and NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt.
Byers argued she “was also beset with no small amount of internal drama and more than a few anonymously sourced tabloid pieces that attacked her ratings and character and cast doubt on her future at the network.”
He never linked to them, so we’ll mention a few here. As our Nick Fondacaro wrote, her ratings floundered and, by October 2021, the New York Post said CBS suits considered dropping her. By March 2022, the Post claimed Norah was showing “toxic behavior” and a symbol of excess given her reported $65,000 a year wardrobe budget.
Through it all, CBS has stuck by. Byers concluded by citing a staff memo from CBS News boss Wendy McMahon that “Norah’s work here is legendary, and she has several major interviews in the works”, but “[t]here is an urgency to transform and drive revenue around audience growth.”
In other words, they’re hemorrhaging money.
Alas, O’Donnell sounded a hopeful note to her colleagues by saying they “have a lot of work to do covering the most important election of our lifetime” and are “so fortunate to share those values with so many hard-working journalists who believe how important the work of journalism is to a healthy democracy.”
