Norah O’Donnell To Exit As Anchor Of ‘CBS Evening News’ After Election; Will Take On Senior Correspondent Role
Norah O’Donnell is exiting her role as anchor of CBS Evening News after the election, and will take on a new role as senior correspondent doing high-profile sit-down interviews.
O’Donnell has been in the anchor chair since 2019; she had previously been co-anchor of CBS This Morning and, before that, chief White House correspondent.
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No successor was named. Wendy McMahon, CEO of CBS News and Stations, wrote in a memo to staffers that plans for the newscast would be announced soon and that the network remained “committed to its mission.”
“It’s time to do something different,” O’Donnell wrote in a memo to staff. “This presidential election will be my seventh as a journalist, and for many of us in this business we tend to look at our careers in terms of these milestone events.”
She added, “I’ll still be anchoring all of our major coverage this year, election night and hopefully a debate! Beyond that, I’m pleased to share that I have made a long-term commitment to CBS News to continue to do the same storytelling and big interviews that have been our hallmark. I will continue to contribute to Evening News and all of our news broadcasts, including 60 Minutes.”
During her tenure, O’Donnell has landed interviews with figures like Pope Francis and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, with portions airing on the newscast and on 60 Minutes. Her reports on sexual assault in the military won numerous awards.
But CBS Evening News has remained in third place among the broadcast networks, even though its audience still beats most of that on cable news channels.
O’Donnell had signed a deal in 2022 that extended her contract through this year’s election, including that she would remain in the anchor desk for three more years.
Her exit comes after the surprise departure earlier this month of Ingrid Ciprián-Matthews, the president of CBS News, with no successor yet named. Her departure followed the announcement that CBS parent Paramount Global would merge with Skydance and be led by David Ellison and Jeff Shell. That is expected to lead to another round of cost cutting, with major changes expected across divisions.
McMahon wrote in her note that O’Donnell would “have the real estate and flexibility to leverage big bookings on numerous platforms including primetime specials, 60 Minutes, CBS News Sunday Morning, and more.”
“The fact is…Norah’s superpower is her ability to secure and then masterfully deliver unparalleled interviews and stories that set the news cycle and capture the cultural zeitgeist,” McMahon wrote. “From her global exclusive with Pope Francis to her interviews with every living president, Norah’s newsmaking interviews always deliver for the audience.”
After Dan Rather’s exit from the chair in 2005 after 24 years, CBS News has gone through a succession of evening news anchors including Bob Schieffer, Katie Couric, Jeff Glor and Scott Pelley. Although the evening newscasts don’t have the audience and influence that they once did, they still are viewed as flagships of the news divisions, with anchors tapped for breaking news events and the “big get” interviews.
The network sought to distinguish O’Donnell as the only female evening news anchor on the big three broadcast networks, as well as the decision to base the show in Washington, D.C., where she lives, rather than in New York, as had been the case for her predecessors. Last week, CBS Evening News drew an average of 4.38 million viewers, with ABC’s World News Tonight leading with 7.59 million and NBC Nightly News with 6.19 million.
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