Norah O'Donnell slid into the CBS Evening News anchor chair on July 15, shifting from her spot at CBS This Morning. She's had some significant gets since moving to evenings, including interviews with Apple CEO Tim Cook and Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.
CBS Evening News anchor Norah ODonnell
O'Donnell is ready for another shift, as CBS News prepares to relocate its evening newscast to Washington. The D.C.-based newscast debuts the first week of December. A set is being built in the division's D.C. bureau. O'Donnell is well-connected in our nation's capital, where she covered the White House, Congress and the Pentagon before becoming an anchor.
CBS Evening News has been mired in third place among the broadcast networks for years, but ratings are ticking up. For the week ending Nov. 15, the program averaged just over 6 million total viewers, and 1.2 million viewers 25-54, which CBS said is its best performance since March. It has far to go, but CBS News president and senior executive producer Susan Zirinsky likes her Evening News talent. I really think we have the right person in the right job at the right time, Zirinsky said.
O'Donnell succeeded Jeff Glor on the evening desk. Alternating between anchoring from Washington and from New York before the official move, she spoke with B C about the Beltway relocation, her run so far on Evening News and what's next for the broadcast. An edited transcript follows.
B C: Why the move to D.C.?
Norah O'Donnell: I've been a beat reporter my whole life. Before I was anchoring the morning news, I covered the Pentagon, I covered Congress, I covered the White House. As an anchor, I've covered hurricanes and school shootings. The best way to cover stories is to get as close to them as you can. We looked at the landscape in 2020 and said, How can we best cover what's going to be the biggest story of the day? And so the executives made the decision about moving the broadcast to Washington.
When Susan Zirinsky came to me and said, Hey, we'd like you to anchor the Evening News, and we're thinking about moving it to Washington, I thought, wow, that's really interesting. I can already tell the whole team is energized by it. I think our reporting is always what sets CBS apart, and we're continuing to build on that. And I think we're better positioned than ever to do that now.
B C: Any concern that some viewers are sick of Washington, that there's D.C. fatigue out there?
NO: I don't think so. There's a way to tell a story. Look at farming: We had a record number of farmers committing suicide, you have farmers going bankrupt and where does a lot of that policy decision-making, in terms of helping them out financially, originate from? Washington. So we cover the story by visiting some of the farms that are failing, but we come back and do some reporting about what's happening in Washington that's leading to this from an economic policy, a trade policy, a lack of subsidy policy, whatever it is. That just augments the story that we're telling out in the field.
This is not a Washington broadcast. It originates in Washington and is going to use the resources here to deliver the smartest and newsiest broadcast.
B C: How do you grade yourself on the evening newscast so far?
NO: I'm really, really proud of this broadcast. It's a 30-minute broadcast, so it has to be tight. We can't tell every story every night. It's a venerable newscast and a legacy broadcast. And so, it's a high bar every night about what we put on the air. I'm really proud of everything we've done. I also feel like we're just getting started. It's a new team and it's a really strong team and we're just beginning to evolve.
B C: How is the newscast different from what it was six months ago?
NO: I don't ever compare myself to anybody else or compare the broadcast.
It's not unlike what we were doing in the morning; we always said, more real news. We always said, the news is back in the morning, and that's how I approach the evening news. We want to be the smartest, most trusted broadcast out there. There's a survey out today that says Americans feel like they're bombarded by a lot of information. They don't know which ones to trust. I want our audience to know that they can trust CBS News.
The broadcast networks all think that. We've got probably the newsiest broadcast. We had [correspondent] Charlie D'Agata out of Syria most of last week [Nov. 11-15], almost every night. That's different than our colleagues. Our London bureau is absolutely superb; the correspondents are top notch. I hope we're doing more international and foreign news than our colleagues. Syria is at the top of the list because that involves our American forces, and people do care about our military. They care about where our forces are stationed, they care about where we're spending money overseas in terms of where we put our military resources.
B C: How else is CBS Evening News different from the competition?
NO: NBC and ABC do a great job. I have a lot of friends over there. But the correspondents that we have are superb reporters. We've got honestly the best editors and cameramen. 60 Minutes would be a great example, where you see it in a longer format, but I see it on our air every night, too. The way we shoot and tell a story from a production standpoint is just exemplary. What I wanted to do in coming over as the anchor and managing editor is, how do we showcase better? We're trying to better showcase the correspondents that we have and all the journalists that work with a correspondent, from the production team to the photographers.
B C: What's next for the newscast besides the new address?
NO: We're playing the
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Norah O'Donnell slid into the CBS Evening News anchor chair on July 15, shifting from her spot at CBS This Morning. She's had some significant gets since moving to evenings, including interviews with Apple CEO Tim Cook and Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.
