Anchors Away: TV-News Veterans Exit Ahead of Ratings Challenges, Digital Change in 2025
For TV-news outlets, 2025 is shaping up to be a year of out with the old and in with the….who?
With the economics of newsgathering less certain as info-hounds move to streaming and social media for their early facts, traditional TV-news venues have been parting ways with veteran anchors and correspondents. Whether the decisions are mutual or unilateral, amicable or adverse, they will leave places such as NBC News, MSNBC, Fox News, CBS News and CNN with fewer of some of their most recognizable faces at a point in the business cycle when viewership tends to narrow.
Hoda Kotb is taking a final lap this week at NBC's "Today," after deciding to leave the show and spend more time with her young children. Andrea Mitchell will this month sign off from the MSNBC program she has anchored since 2008, opting to work her reporting roles more heavily. Norah O'Donnell will leave "CBS Evening News" at about the same time and take on a new special correspondent role. Jeff Glor, a central part of CBS News' Saturday-morning program, left the network in September amid layoffs. Before the end of 2024, CNN bid farewell to both Chris Wallace and Alisyn Camerota. Fox News' Neil Cavuto, one of the few anchors whose time at the Fox Corp. owned outlet dates to its 1996 launch, said in late December he was leaving.
All these exits take place amid a not-so-gradual shrinking of the TV-news sector. CBS News, ABC News, NBC News, CNN and CNBC all shed staffers last year, and the fiscal terrain is likely to be just as challenging in months ahead - if not more so. News audiences typically dwindle after a presidential election cycle.
Already, 2025 projections from market-research firm Kagan, part of S&P Global Intelligence, call for declines in advertising and subscriptions at all three mainstay cable-news outlets. Ad sales at Fox News Channel are seen dipping to approximately $1.01 billion from $1.03 billion in 2024; to nearly $568.9 million at MSNBC from $639.6 million last year; and to about $499.1 million at CNN from $563.9 million. Each of the three is also projected to lose about 3 million subscribers over the next 12 months, according to the Kagan data.
Last year was supposed to be a watermark in the business, with interest in the 2024 presidential election fueling ratings, which in turn generate new ad dollars. Indeed, primetime ratings surged for all three cable-news outlets over the year, with the number of viewers between 25 and 54 - the demographic coveted most by advertisers - up 40% at Fox News,17% at CNN and 9% at MSNBC.
Of course, that was then.
Since the election, CNN and MSNBC have suffered notable ratings declines. According to Nielsen, MSNBC lost 65% of its primetime audience in the 25-to-54 demographic between the election and the end of 2024. CNN lost 57%. Fox News in December captured about 71% of the overall audience still turning in to any of the three outlets. Executives and producers at CNN and MSNBC remain optimistic that audiences will return following the second inauguration of President Donald Trump, and some hold out hope to attract more viewers via digital platforms.
The future, however, is foggy. Many of the corporations that support the aforementioned news divisions face existential dilemmas. Paramount Global, parent of CBS News, is about to be acquired by Skydance Media, which has vowed to cut another $1.5 billion in costs off the company's balance sheet - following $500 million in cuts that have already taken place. Warner Bros. Discovery, parent of CNN, is restructuring itself so that its cable networks are housed in a separate division from its production studios and streaming platforms. Many on Wall Street see the maneuver as one that could set up its TV networks for potential sale. What's more, CNN this week goes on trial in a defamation suit that has a plaintiff seeking $1 billion after a 2021 report on the network questioned the activities of a security consultant aiding people who wanted to escape Afghanistan.
The news assets of NBCUniversal are navigating through an uncertain time as parent Comcast spins off the bulk of its cable networks, separating MSNBC and CNBC from NBC News. Disney's commitment to ABC News has come under scrutiny after the company agreed to pay a settlement of $15 million to Donald Trump's presidential library after anchor George Stephanopoulos asserted incorrectly in March on air that Trump had been found liable in a court case for raping writer E. Jean Carroll.
Fox Corp., which sold off many of its cable and entertainment assets to Disney in 2019, has fared better than many of its competitors in recent years, but it faces challenges as well. The company's controlling Murdoch family is at odds about how Fox and sister News Corp. will be governed should founder Rupert Murdoch, 93, die. And its Fox News unit is expected to face a defamation lawsuit as soon as this year levied by voting-technology firm Smartmatic that seeks $2 billion for debunked claims aired on the network about that company's role in rigging the 2020 presidential election, which was conducted legally and without interference.
Perhaps those pressures clamp down on any desire to make startling hires to replace those who are departing. At CBS, John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois, veterans themselves, will helm a retooled "Evening News" that may closely resemble a local broadcast. NBC News will next week elevate Craig Melvin, a regular morning presence at "Today," to replace Kotb during the show's first two hours. Fox News, MSNBC and CNN are widely expected to rely at present on current staffers to fill vacancies made by the exits of Wallace, Mitchell and Cavuto, according to people familiar with each situation.
Veterans, with their entrenched ways of working and their higher-than-median salaries, seem like an obvious element for cost-cutting. In some cases, they have become so familiar over the years that viewers take them for granted, and they no longer generate the best ratings in their time periods. Little wonder, then, that so many have announced departures in recent weeks.
And yet, these well-known anchors still have connections to an audience. Some of them still have enough of a recognition factor to develop their own communities. Wallace, Cavuto and Camerota, have, for example, suggested that they have new chapters to explore. None of them will capture, most likely, the large simultaneous crowds that tune into their previous employers. But they won't have to in order to be successful.
They need only generate enough ad and subscription revenue to feed a small online venture - not so hard to accomplish in an era of YouTube channels and Substack newsletters. Former colleagues like Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Don Lemon have already dipped their toes into such waters.
TV-news mainstays have little to fear from any single departure. Stack up enough of them over time, however, and they may be looking at damage by a thousand cuts. Some of those well-worn anchors, as things turn out, may have a long way to go before their careers are truly at an end.
