Lester Holt of NBC is absent from Nightly News, his flagship program that he has helmed for almost ten years.
In a message emailed to employees on Monday, Holt, 65, announced his resignation, ten years after he filled in full-time to replace longstanding fixture Brian Williams.
According to a statement from NBC News’ Executive Vice President of Programming Janelle Rodriguez, the seasoned anchor will now exclusively work his regular role on Dateline.
A replacement has not yet been announced by NBC, whose asset MSNBC just canceled Joy Reid’s show The ReidOut.
According to Rodriguez, “[Holt] will continue at the helm of Nightly until early summer,” after which he will focus “his energy on the rapidly-expanding powerhouse that is Dateline.”
After Williams’ career was upended by a controversy involving reporting from the Iraq War, Holt, who had previously hosted the show’s weekend edition, started hosting Nightly News on weekdays in June 2015.
He later wrote a statement to Nightly and Dateline staff on Monday morning, describing his tenure on the show as a “amazing ride.”
Since September 2011, Dateline’s primary anchor has failed to bring up the program’s declining ratings, which are declining annually.
As an alternative, he was thrilled about “staying as anchor of “Dateline NBC” for the first time “in a full time position.”
Lester Holt of NBC is absent from Nightly News, his flagship program that he has helmed for almost ten years.
An excerpt from the Monday memo that Holt wrote to his Dateline and Nightly News employees is shown.
In a memo that the company has now re-shared, the anchor continued, “I will be expanding my footprint on the broadcast and crafting ‘Dateline’ hours on subjects I care deeply about.”
“As Dateline continues to expand and draw in new viewers, I am ecstatic to be able to collaborate more closely with my incredibly talented friends.”
With over 2.3 million viewers, Dateline is now NBC’s 14th most popular show. However, like most legacy media broadcasts, its viewership has severely decreased in recent years.
The magazine-style show, which is sometimes likened to CBS’s 60 Minutes or the PBS NewsHour, had an average viewership of over 4 million people just two years ago.
With an average of 6.742 million viewers overall, NBC Nightly News is currently lagging behind evening news leader ABC World News Tonight, which is down 1% from this time last year.
The statistic, moreover, was recorded following some gains from the long-running program – which over the summer was subject to some double digit dips in total audience and in the hallowed 25-to-54-year-old demographic.
The show’s audience was down 27% in the group that marketers value the most and down 17% overall in July compared to the previous quarter, but it has since stopped the decline.
But for many viewers at home, Holt has become a staple, and a format shift has already caused a ratings disaster at competitor CBS.
In a message emailed to employees on Monday, Holt, 65, announced his resignation, ten years after he filled in full-time to replace longstanding fixture Brian Williams.
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