Norah O’Donnell and CBS News have come to terms on a new deal that will keep the anchor at “CBS Evening News” beyond the 2024 election, according to three people familiar with the matter.
A CBS News spokesperson declined to offer immediate comment, and a spokeswoman for O’Donnell declined to make the anchor available for comment. O’Donnell disclosed her new contract Friday evening while having a toast with her crew at CBS News’ Washington, D.C., facility, according to these people.
The deal was cemented despite growing speculation that CBS News, under the direction of co-president Neeraj Khemlani, might seek to replace the anchor, who has seen her profile grow during a stint co-anchoring the formerly-titled “CBS This Morning” and a tenure at a “CBS Evening News” that has moved its main operation to the nation’s capital. After Khemlani came aboard last year, according to two people with knowledge of the situation, CBS News began reaching out to agents representing anchors and correspondents who worked for rival operations to suss out whether they might have interest in working for a daytime CBS News program, which talent representatives took to mean the anchor chair at “CBS Evening News.”
Still, O’Donnell was eager to stay in place at the news division, where she has won recognition for her investigations into how the U.S. military handles sexual assault. She has also contributed frequently to “60 Minutes” and launched a new, streaming edition of the CBS News mainstay, “Person to Person,” a show once anchored by the legendary Edward R. Murrow. O’Donnell’s version is designed for telecast on CBS News’ broadband hub.
To be sure, “CBS Evening News” continues to lag its main competitors, ABC’s “World News Tonight” and NBC’s “NBC Nightly News.” And while its audience has shrunk over the past 12 months, the program has enjoyed a boost over its pre-pandemic performance. The show won an average of 5.42 million viewers during the first quarter of 2022, according to Nielsen, compared with 5.99 million viewers in the year-earlier period.
More to come….