Norah O'Donnell leaving as anchor of CBS evening newscast after election

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Norah O'Donnell said Tuesday she is leaving after the presidential election as anchor of the “CBS Evening News,” a post she has held for five years.

O'Donnell, 50, has been the network's top anchor since 2019, and prior to that was a host of CBS' morning news show and White House Correspondent covering President Barack Obama's administration. She told her CBS News colleagues in an email Tuesday that she's looking forward to a change.

“I have spent 12 years in the anchor chair here at CBS News, tied to a daily broadcast and the rigors of a relentless news cycle,” she wrote. “It's time to do something different.”

She said she is staying with CBS News to contribute interviews and other stories, but in a role not fully defined. CBS says it is committed to the broadcast continuing, but gave no indication of who will be replacing her.

The “CBS Evening News,” the perch from which Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather held forth for many years, generally runs third in the network ratings behind ABC's “World News Tonight” with David Muir and the “NBC Nightly News” with Lester Holt.

During the week of July 15-21, for instance, ABC averaged 6.8 million viewers, NBC had 5.5 million and CBS had 4 million, the Nielsen company said.

Prior to the onset of cable news, the three broadcast evening news anchors were generally considered the most powerful journalists in television news, and are still influential.

O'Donnell said a recent interview with Pope Francis, which became her first prime-time special for the network, got her thinking about doing something new. She'll focus on interviews in the future for various CBS broadcast and digital properties.

“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,” said Wendy McMahon, CBS News chair.

She said the change had nothing to do with the pending merger of CBS News parent Paramount to Skydance Media. CBS News' president, Ingrid Ciprian-Matthews, announced her departure from the network shortly after news of the merger broke.