OAN Staff James Meyers
1:48 PM – Wednesday, July 31, 2024
Anchor Norah O’Donnell will reportedly be leaving CBS Evening News after the 2024 Presidential Election commences due to reported cost-cutting by parent company Paramount, the network said on Tuesday.
O’Donnell, who stepped into the position back in 2019, was able to extend her contract with CBS News in 2022, despite rumors that she would eventually be replaced.
However, her salary was rumored to be cut down from the $8 million a year when she was hired.
“After 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, and I am so fortunate to work with the best journalists and people in the business,” O’Donnell wrote in a note to staff Tuesday.”
“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 later added.
The show’s ratings have been falling during her five years in the main anchor seat, dropping almost 25% and lagging behind rival networks like ABC and NBC.
“She deserves to lose her job,” one CBS employee insider told the New York Post outlet after hearing about her exit.
However, O’Donnell will still remain with the network as a correspondent.
She will be shifting her focus to taking on more prominent interviews while reporting for other shows, including “60 minutes,” according to CBS.
“She’s been put out to TV journalism pasture,” the source added. “It’s like being sent to the graveyard of special projects.”
O’Donnell’s exit is also only one month after CBS News President Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews stepped down, as CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon has begun cutting costs and shifting the direction of the network.
Meanwhile, Paramount Global is expected to slash $500 million of its likely merger with Skydance Media.
CBS News‘s plan in place is to have rotating anchors after O’Donnell leaves her role in November, according to Puck News.
While O’Donnell has been actively featured on CBS Evening News, she secured some notable interviews over the years, but the program averaged only 4.4 million total viewers in the most recent quarter and less than 600,000 in the 25- to 54-year-old age demographic.
“CBS is so irrelevant if you’re a journalist. Nobody is watching. Sometimes you feel like you’re in the witness protection program,” the network insider continued.
Furthermore, CBS has faced continuous issues securing a lead anchor for the evening show on a long-term basis. Since Dan Rather’s scandal-plagued exit from the anchor desk in 2005, CBS has not been able to find an anchor that has lasted more than six years.
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