#Ellison owned #CBS to return Norah O'Donnell to morning show airwaves alongside Gayle King after her ignominiously being booted from anchor desk on #CBS #EveningNews where during her four year tenure O'Donnell was consistently averaging up to 5 million viewers a night. O'Donnell's reign as anchor and managing editor saw her move the broadcast from NYC to DC, and become only third woman in US to helm a solo nightly news broadcast, before network nincompoopery, blame games and ratings rumour mills grinding out tales of backstage bitchiness had her yanked off air.
Link below features reporting by Brian Steinberg at #Variety, who while mostly quoting CBS morning show hype, does mention tellingly "There are many who feel CBS News might be in a better position had previous management kept her in the anchor chair in the evening."
Since #BariWeiss plopped her glamour guy pick Tony Dokoupil Into the #CBSNews TV anchor role in January, viewership has dropped to an all-time low, scraping just 3.7 million nightly viewers by April. While barely beating Bret Baier #ratings at #FoxNews, the once vaunted #CBSEveningNews #broadcast pales in pull now in contrast to #NBC with between 6m-7m viewers & gets less than half of the views of leader #ABC #WorldNews Tonight that puls over 8m viewers.
https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/norah-odonnell-cbs-mornings-return-tv-news-1236850134/