By David Bauder, Media Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --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.
Harvey Weinstein hit with new sex crime charge in New York
Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a new sex crime charge in New York, as he awaits retrial in his landmark #MeToo case.
Details of the new allegations were not immediately available. He was charged with committing a criminal sex act.
The jailed ex-movie mogul has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
Prosecutors revealed last week that Weinstein had been indicted on additional sex crime charges that weren't part of the case that led to his now-overturned 2020 conviction. But the new indictment was sealed until his arraignment.
Prosecutors have said that the grand jury heard evidence of up to three alleged assaults — two in hotels in the Tribeca neighborhood and one at a lower Manhattan residential building. The purported incidents took place from the mid-2000s to 2016, prosecutors said.
But it's not clear whether any of those allegations underlie the new indictment.
While bracing for the new charges, Weinstein also is awaiting retrial after New York state's highest court this spring overturned his 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges involving two women. The high court, called the Court of Appeals, ordered a new trial, which is tentatively scheduled to begin Nov. 12.
The Court of Appeals ruled that the then-trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations that were not part of the case. That judge's term expired in 2022, and he is no longer on the bench.
Prosecutors have said they'll seek to fold the new charges into the retrial, but Weinstein's lawyers say it should be a separate case.
Weinstein, who also was convicted in 2022 in a Los Angeles rape case, remains behind bars while awaiting his New York retrial.
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