NBC’s Lester Holt will step down from NBC Nightly News this summer after 10 years as its anchor, he told staff during a morning news call on Monday. He will then transition to NBC’s Dateline, a 30 Rock source confirmed to the Daily Beast.
The network did not immediately announce a replacement for Holt, though it plans to name one soon. NBC did not respond to a request for comment.
In a memo to staff on Monday, Holt looked back fondly on his tenures at Nightly News and Dateline since joining the network in 2000 and said he would solidify his final air date closer to the summer. Holt has anchored Dateline since 2011.
“As a 20-year-old radio reporter on the police beat chasing breaking news around San Francisco, I could never have imagined my career path would unfold in the way it has,” he wrote to staff. “What an amazing ride.”
Holt, 65, was named Nightly News anchor in 2015 after then-anchor Brian Williams was suspended over a lie he told about his time covering the Iraq War. Holt often brought program outside New York to cover Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; the Oct. 7 attack in Israel; and various natural disasters in the U.S.
The program remained solidly behind No. 2 in the evening-news ratings battle behind ABC’s World News Tonight, though the role established Holt as a fixture for NBC News. He moderated multiple presidential contests, including Donald Trump’s first presidential debate in the fall of 2016.
Holt has also interviewed nearly every top political figure of the last decade, including Trump, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“He has led the network during some of the country’s most fraught and challenging times in the past decade,” NBC’s executive vice president of programming, Janelle Rodriguez, told staff in a memo. “Quite simply, Lester is the beating heart of this news organization.”
Holt’s departure is the latest in a series of changes at NBC News. Today fixture Hoda Kotb left the program last month to pursue special reports, and Chuck Todd left the company completely. Its former sister network MSNBC also plans to reshuffle its lineup, laying off progressive stalwart Joy Reid and canceling Alex Wagner’s 9 p.m. show. It reportedly plans to move anchors—and former Biden White House officials—Jen Psaki and Symone Sanders-Townsend to weekdays, among other changes.
It was unclear who will replace Holt on the chair. NBC News senior national correspondent Tom Llamas has reportedly longed for the anchor job. Llamas returned to the network in January 2021 after more than six years at ABC News, where he followed a similar trajectory to Holt’s rise as Nightly News anchor as World News Tonight‘s weekend anchor. Llamas currently hosts Top Story with Tom Llamas on NBC’s streaming service NBC News Now.
