“There’s so much work to be proud of!” she wrote in a memo that was obtained by The Washington Post. But noting the “rigors of a relentless news cycle” during her combined 12 years as a daily anchor — CBS’s morning news show before “Evening News” — she added that “it’s time to do something different.”
O’Donnell’s move “was a joint decision” between her and Wendy McMahon, who serves as president of CBS News and Stations, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment.
“I see this as an opportunity,” O’Donnell wrote in her memo. “I want to thank Wendy McMahon as this new role will also allow me to extend the reach of the work we do to new audiences in new ways.”
Joint decision or not, the move stunned CBS News employees. One longtime staffer said it came “straight out of left field.”
Earlier this month, CBS News president Ingrid Ciprián-Matthews resigned, in the wake of a merger announcement between CBS News’ parent company, Paramount Global, and production company Skydance Media that is expected to result in waves of cost-cutting.
But the source with knowledge of the situation said the O’Donnell news was unrelated to the merger.
O’Donnell, who is currently the only female host of a broadcast evening news show, ascended to the role as anchor and managing editor of “CBS Evening News” with some fanfare in the summer of 2019.
She first joined CBS in 2011 as the network’s chief White House correspondent, after a long run at NBC News. Between 2012 and 2019, she served as co-host of CBS’s morning show.
O’Donnell said she will be anchoring CBS’s election coverage as well as any candidate debate the network might host. (The Biden campaign agreed in May to CBS’s invitation for a vice-presidential debate.)
“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 in her own memo.
McMahon told employees that the network “remains committed” to the evening news show and said plans will be shared soon.
While CBS’s evening news show is generally third behind NBC’s “Nightly News” and ABC’s “World News Tonight,” it still drives a large traditional television audience in an era when viewership is increasingly splintered among different platforms and programs. Between 2022 and 2023, “CBS Evening News” averaged 4.83 million total viewers.
