In a move first predicted by Puck’s Dylan Byers back on July 31, 2024 (and then on September 27), NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt told staff in an e-mail he’d be stepping down “around the start of the summer” after a decade at the weekday show while both remaining and expanding his role as lead anchor of Dateline NBC.
The announcement came nearly a month to the day after competitor Norah O’Donnell left the CBS Evening News to continue as a special network correspondent.
Holt said the “big decision” will allow for “a future that I’m happy to say will keep me here for years to come and doing what I love” with the Dateline NBC role allowing him to spend more time “crafting Dateline hours on subjects I care deeply about.”
By the time he leaves, Holt will have been on weekdays for ten years and then another seven as weekend anchor of NBC Nightly News (and even more on the weekend editions of Today). He officially rose to the weekday job on June 22, 2015 following four months with the interim tag that started on February 9, 2015 in light of the Lyin’ Brian Williams scandal.
With the 65-year-old Holt firmly in second place with nearly 6.5 million average viewers during the 2023-2024 TV season, having anchored presidential debates, and interviewed multiple presidents, the obvious question would be this: why leave?
Byers nailed it in his July piece about O’Donnell’s departure coming down to one thing, which is money (click “expand”):
Such a transition was inevitable, given the secular decline of linear television and broadcast news and the cost cutting it all entails. O’Donnell and her fellow nightly news anchors make very healthy seven-figure salaries, though in the case of David Muir at ABC’s top-rated World News Tonight, it’s likely even more. These salaries are incongruous with the new economic realities, of course, as well as with the shows’ double-digit percent quarter-to-quarter ratings declines. Thus, every successive anchor in these chairs is destined to be a smaller name with a smaller paycheck as their parentcos prepare for consolidation.
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In any event, O’Donnell is almost certainly not the only high-profile anchor who will pivot, step back, or retire in the months following the election, likely to be replaced by less expensive talent. Well-placed sources at NBC believe Lester Holt, now 65, is likely to step down from NBC Nightly News following the inauguration. (An NBC News spokesperson denied any impending moves by Holt: “This is false. There have been no discussions or plans by Lester or by NBC News for him to change his role.”) Holt may draw a bigger audience than O’Donnell, but the show’s audience is declining at an even more precipitous rate (down 17 percent in total audience last quarter and 27 percent in the 25-to-54 year-old demo.) Holt’s contract is also up next year, though that tends to have little bearing on timing in these matters.
Fast-forward to September and Byers again predicted Holt would leave as a further “gradual sunsetting” of “the star system” in TV news with monstrous salaries worth tens of millions no longer feasible. As he and others reported through the fall and into January, this was the real reason Hoda Kotb left NBC’s Today, not solely a decision to spend more time with family.
Back to Monday’s announcement, Holt remarked he has “now anchored two of the most successful and iconic television news programs in broadcast history” and come a long way from being “a 20-year-old radio reporter on the police beat chasing breaking news around San Francisco[.]”
“All of you at Dateline and Nightly News are part of a formidable team, and in my opinion are the greatest group of journalists one could hope to work with. It is a true privilege. Thank you in advance for your kindness and understanding during this transition,” he added.
Byers’s 2024 assessments of who would replace Holt fell to senior national correspondent and NBC News NOW anchor Tom Llamas, which one would guess has solid footing given his role as Holt’s primary fill-in and even anchor during major news events, such as the California wildfires.
