Tom Llamas will succeed Lester Holt in the anchor’s chair of NBC’s flagship weeknight news program NBC Nightly News, the company announced on Wednesday.
Holt announced last month that he was stepping down later this summer after helming the show for the past decade. The 65-year-old will remain with the network and focus his energy on a dedicated full-time anchoring role at Dateline, which he has hosted for the past 15 years.
In an announcement to staff on Wednesday, NBC News’ Executive Vice President of Programming Janelle Rodriguez noted that besides taking over for Holt on NBC Nightly News, Llamas will continue to anchor Top Story with Tom Llamas every weeknight on the network’s digital streaming service NBC News Now. Llamas will also serve as the managing editor of NBC Nightly News.
Llamas, who joined NBC in 2021 from ABC News, has served as Holt’s regular fill-in on NBC Nightly News since arriving at the network and had long been expected to take over the anchor chair when Holt eventually stepped aside. During his time at ABC, he was the network’s chief national affairs correspondent and served as the weekend anchor of ABC World News Tonight. He also regularly filled in for lead anchor David Muir on weekdays. Llamas began his career at NBC Universal, working as an intern at Telemundo and NBC News before working as a reporter for several different NBC local stations.
“His seasoned background — both in the field and at the desk — uniquely positions him to carry forward the legacy of Nightly News,” Rodriguez said in her memo.
“Beyond the broadcast, Tom has been instrumental in growing NBC News NOW into the leading streaming news network, helping to introduce NBC News to a new generation of viewers,” she added. “On a personal note, he is a dedicated father and husband who brings humanity and perspective to his reporting.”
Llamas, who has also appeared regularly on NBC’s Today Show, said in a statement that anchoring the network’s weeknight news show “is a profound honor and one that carries tremendous responsibility,” adding that he looks “forward to working with the world class journalists at Nightly News” going forward. He also heaped praise on the man he is replacing.
“Lester Holt is a great man and one of the most trusted broadcasters of our time,” he noted. “Just like Lester, I promise to be devoted to our viewers and dedicated to the truth.”
Holt is expected to formally sign off from NBC Nightly News in early summer and will transition to anchoring Dateline in a full-time capacity at that time. The date of Llamas’ anchor debut on NBC Nightly News is still to be determined.
With Llamas retaining his role at Top Story, which airs at 7 p.m. ET, he will become the first solo evening broadcast anchor to also anchor a primetime weekday streaming newscast.
While NBC Nightly News’ ratings have stayed steady, averaging about 7 million total viewers a night, it still continues to lag behind Muir and ABC’s World News Tonight. According to Nielsen, World News pulled in 8.3 million viewers last month and outpaced NBC in the key 25-54 advertising demographic. At the same time, though, Nightly News recently closed the gap with ABC in the 25-54 demo to its closest level in years.
Holt moving aside for Llamas comes at a time of upheaval and uneasiness at not only NBC but the television news industry as a whole. Broadcast and cable networks have been shaking up their business models amid relentless cord-cutting, sinking viewership and slumping advertising revenues, which has also led many media companies to slash payroll and overhaul programming. ABC News, for instance, just announced on Wednesday that it was cutting roughly six percent of its staff and shuttering political data site FiveThirtyEight, while CNN also let go of hundreds of staffers recently as it looks to pivot to a digital-first company.
Last year, veteran Today host Hoda Kotb left NBC after the network asked her to take a cut to her hefty $20 million salary. Meanwhile, former Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd resigned in January after 17 years with NBC after seeing his role greatly diminish and his Sunday show hosting duties taken from him.
Elsewhere across the television news landscape, other prominent names have either departed their networks altogether or stepped away from the anchor’s chair. Norah O’Donnell left CBS Evening News earlier this year to take on a correspondent’s role with the network, while stalwarts such as Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and CNN’s Chris Wallace quit their networks within the past few months rather than take reduced salaries.
