CBS News names new evening anchor, revamps morning show

By LYNN ELBER

AP Television Writer

Norah O’Donnell will become anchor and managing editor of the “CBS Evening News” and Gayle King is getting two new morning show co-hosts as CBS News seeks to boost the programs’ ratings and put a tumultuous, scandal-scarred period behind it.

The changes announced Monday were orchestrated by Susan Zirinsky, a 47-year CBS News veteran who took over in March as the division’s president. Her predecessor left after Charlie Rose at “CBS This Morning” and the top executive at “60 Minutes” lost their jobs following misconduct allegations.

“This is a start of a new era for CBS News,” Zirinsky said in a statement.

In an interview, she said change was demanded by both internal events — she likened the past few years at CBS News to the children’s books known as “A Series of Unfortunate Events” — and political and media realities.

“Breaking through the cacophony of voices and choices for news is quite extraordinary. And to take a venerable legacy network like CBS and help it break through the clutter was my goal. And how do you do that? You shake it up,” she said. “I have the baseline, the phenomenal reporters of CBS News both domestically and abroad, but to take something that is very stuck in the past and take it to a new place” is the goal.

For CBS News overall, that means delivering news to viewers on whatever platform, digital or traditional, they use, Zirinsky said. For the nightly newscast in particular, it means changing anchors and relocating the program from New York to Washington, D.C., for the first time and as the 2020 election looms.

“I feel like Washington is the center of gravity right now and for the next two years. The most important job we have over the next two years is revealing the country to itself,” Zirinsky said. That doesn’t mean a campaign-centric newscast, she said, but one in which politically adroit journalist O’Donnell can be an advocate for Americans and “hold the powerful accountable.”

O’Donnell, 45, who replaces anchor Jeff Glor after his short tenure, will be the third woman to serve as solo anchor of an evening newscast, following Diane Sawyer at ABC and Katie Couric at CBS. She noted the reputation of Walter Cronkite, who anchored the broadcast for 19 years and was often referred to as “the most trusted man in America.”