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NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt announced to network staff Monday that he was stepping down from the show he’s hosted since 2015.
“As a 20-year-old radio reporter on the police beat chasing breaking news around San Francisco, I could never have imagined my career path would unfold in the way it has,” he told staffers in his memo. “What an amazing ride.”
“After 10 years, 17 if you include my years on the weekends, the time has come for me to step away from my role as anchor of Nightly News,” Holt wrote. “It has truly been the honor of a lifetime to work with each of you every day, keeping journalism as our true north and our viewers at the center of everything we do.”
The 65-year-old journalist will remain with the network in a full-time capacity and retain his anchor role on Dateline, which he has helmed for the past 15 years. Holt also stated that he would be expanding his role with the news magazine show going forward, saying that besides continuing with his hosting duties, he would now be “crafting Dateline hours on subjects I care deeply about.”
In an additional note to staff, NBC News’ Executive Vice President of Programming Janelle Rodriguez also reiterated that Holt was leaving NBC Nightly News to take on a “dedicated full-time role at Dateline, his second home.” Additionally, she pointed out that Holt would fill the anchor’s chair at NBC Nightly News through the early summer “before he devotes his energy to the rapidly-expanding powerhouse that is Dateline.”
She went on to call Holt the “beating heart of this news organization” and a journalist who has “earned deep respect and reverence from our newsroom, industry colleagues and, most importantly, viewers.” Holt also noted in his memo that he would remain on the primetime news broadcast for the next several months.
“I plan to continue anchoring Nightly through around the start of summer,” he stated. “As we get closer, I’ll of course firm up the date and keep all of you in the loop. In the meantime, to my Nightly friends, I look forward to sharing some banana pudding as is our send-off tradition!”
NBC News has not yet named a successor for the anchor role.
Throughout his tenure at NBC Nightly News, which he’s marked with his signature sign-off “Please take care of yourself and each other,” Holt has repeatedly been named the “most-trusted television news personality in America,” according to The Hollywood Reporter/Morning Consult poll.
Besides his primetime news broadcast, which has seen him do on-the-ground reporting from Israel and Ukraine after war broke out in those countries, Holt has also covered every Olympics since 2002. When he anchored from the 2024 Paris Olympics, NBC Nightly News ranked as the top-rated news broadcast for three weeks straight.
At the same time, though Nightly’s ratings have been fairly strong and averaged roughly 7 million total viewers a night, the show has remained in second place to ABC’s World News Tonight, which is anchored by David Muir. According to Nielsen, ABC attracted an average of 8.3 million viewers earlier this month and outdrew NBC in the key 25-54 advertising demographic. Still, in 2024, the broadcast closed the 25-54 demo gap with ABC to its closest level in the past five years.
Under his watch, the NBC primetime news telecast won the 2022 Edward R. Murrow Award and Holt is scheduled to receive the 2025 William Allen White National Citation from the University of Kansas this spring. He’s also been recognized with several lifetime achievement awards in journalism and was inducted into the National Association of Broadcasters in 2022.
The sudden announcement that Holt will step away from the broadcast he has helmed for a decade comes as not only NBC News but the entire television news industry has been experiencing a recent state of upheaval due to cord-cutting, slumping viewership, and dwindling advertising dollars.
Longtime NBC Today show host Hoda Kotb left the network late last year when NBC proposed cutting her $20 million salary, which the network argued it could no longer justify. Just a few weeks ago, former Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd left the network after 17 years after he saw his role diminish significantly following the loss of his Sunday morning show hosting role.
NBC Universal’s cable assets, which include news channels MSNBC and CNBC, have also been spun off into a separate company, SpinCo. Under new network president Rebecca Kutler, MSNBC is set to shake up its programming lineup, which includes parting ways with nightly host Joy Reid and replacing Alex Wagner in primetime, among other moves.
Holt isn’t the only broadcast news anchor to step away from the anchor’s desk in recent months. CBS Evening News host Norah O’Donnell exited the Tiffany network’s weeknight telecast after years of seeing the show hemorrhage viewers. Meanwhile, the new two-anchor format has been an early ratings disaster, prompting murmurs that CBS News management may soon be on the outs.
