Veteran NBC News correspondent Pete Williams will retire at the end of the month, taking with him years of experience in covering the Department of Justice and the Supreme Court. Before he leaves, however, NBC News has unveiled plans to keep its coverage intact.
There was a bit of a tense moment today during President Biden’s meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia. Saudi security personnel “grabbed” NBC News White House Correspondent Peter Alexander as he shouted questions toward the Saudi prince about the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Pete Williams, longtime correspondent for NBC News covering the Supreme Court and the Justice Department, plans to retire from the network in July. NBC News President Noah Oppenheim made the announcement in a message to staffers on Thursday.
Exclusives
Holt was at the annual NAB Show in Las Vegas over the weekend to accept the honor, telling event attendees, “I have so much respect for this medium [broadcast television] and so much belief in its future,” adding, “And yes, the media landscape is rapidly evolving but broadcast programs remain important touchstones in our culture, our society, holding true to a legacy of excellence and integrity while always peeking around the corner of technology to deliver to our audiences where they are and how they consume our work and product.”
His role as Barbara Walters’s on-air partner lasted only two years, but viewers knew him for three decades as a correspondent, anchor and TV host.
NEW YORK (AP) — NBC News is branching out from covering top stories to performing a theatrical reading. “Today” show hosts Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb will be among the […]
NBC News journalists are troubled by and have expressed dismay to network executives about MSNBC’s intention to hire White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki when she exits the Biden administration, people familiar with the matter say. Noah Oppenheim, the NBC News president, even held an impromptu phone call Friday so that he could address the matter with vexed staffers from the Washington bureau, some of whom have complained to their superiors that the tentative hiring tarnishes the NBC News brand.
Craig Melvin will leave his 11 a.m. weekday morning slot at MSNBC at the end of March, marking the latest shift of personnel at the NBCUniversal-owned cable-news outlet. Melvin will focus more heavily on his duties at NBC News and NBC’s Today, where he is as regular a presence as Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb, according to a spokesperson for MSNBC.
NBC News was tied for 11th in Edison Research’s list of top podcast networks by reach, the only company that is known primarily as a television news broadcaster in the company’s top 18. NBC News said the audience for its podcasts in 2021 grew by 19% over the year before.
NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt will interview Biden in Virginia on Thursday, with excerpts to air that evening on Nightly News and Friday morning on Today. The full interview will air during the Super Bowl pregame show at an exact time to be determined. The interview will be Biden’s first of 2022, and his first formal interview since marking one year in office.
NBC News Digital Executive Editor David Firestone is retiring in mid-May after 45 years in the journalism business, the last five of them at NBC. Firestone joined NBC News on May 1, 2017. He first served as managing editor for NBC News Digital, and was promoted to executive editor in March of last year.
“We are ferociously defending the traditional approach to journalism … that it’s possible to hold the middle ground and be objective and nonpartisan.”
Savannah Guthrie has tested positive for COVID-19. The Today show anchor shared her breakthrough case to Hoda Kotb at the top of NBC’s morning show on Monday. Guthrie, whom Today reported is vaccinated and has received a booster shot, shared that she has felt mild symptoms. “Little sniffles, not much more than that,” she said.
Hoda Kotb has tested positive for COVID-19 amid a surge of cases in New York City over the last month. The Today anchor’s breakthrough case was first reported on the NBC morning show Thursday, with co-anchor Craig Melvin confirming the news on air. “She tested positive for COVID but Hoda tells us that she’s doing just fine, and we look forward to having her back very, very soon,” Melvin said during the show’s third hour.
As the nation’s big media companies look to woo new viewers trying to pick their way through a dizzying number of streaming outlets, news divisions are signing up for the battle. A lot of journalists — and the executives who manage them — will head into a decidedly non-traditional competition in 2022, one that won’t necessarily be won with news scoops. They are rushing to produce new kinds of show formats, and relying on anchors both familiar and less so, all in a furious bid to keep a younger generation of consumers from developing new connections with digital upstarts that threaten to siphon them away.
Williams said in a note to colleagues Tuesday that “following much reflection,” he had decided to exit when his contract ends in December. “This is the end of a chapter and the beginning of another,” Williams wrote. “There are many things I want to do, and I’ll pop up again somewhere.”
The senior Washington correspondent’s NBC News Now streaming program will run at 5 p.m. nightly, and will debut Nov. 15.
NBC News has announced promotions of two key members of the Washington, D.C., bureau, one on-air and another behind the scenes.
On Nov. 2, voters won’t decide who wins the White House or whether Republicans or Democrats gain control of Congress, but NBC’s Kristen Welker and Chuck Todd will lead coverage that evening that could prove to be a harbinger for programming to come: a two-hour streaming show, Meet The Press: Election Night Special, on NBC News Now that will examine the ins and outs of important gubernatorial, state-level and local mayoral elections.
Natalie Morales told staffers on Friday that she plans to leave NBC News for an unspecified new opportunity. Morales will continue to appear on Dateline through the rest of the year and will have a farewell on Today in the coming weeks. Morales has been with the network for 22 years.
While it began life as just another broadcast newsmagazine, the show has taken on a life of its own in recent years, leaning into the true crime genre, and riding that wave as it picked up steam across streaming and podcasts. For the newsmagazine’s 30th season, the network is planning a special podcast and a marathon on Peacock.
