Norah O’Donnell is back in a place where many people feel she always belonged — as one of the top anchors of CBS News. On Tuesday, A.M. viewers will see O’Donnell alongside Gayle King and Nate Burleson on “CBS Mornings,” in a new trio that CBS News executives believe will stabilize the program’s ratings and give viewers more of a reason to watch. O’Donnell is rejoining CBS’ morning program after leaving in May of 2019 to take up a role as the anchor of “CBS Evening News.” “We believe there is a lot of life left in morning television, and therefore we are putting our best people on the field,” says Tom Cibrowski, the president of CBS News, in an interview.
She returns at a crucial moment. CBS has long come in third behind NBC’s “Today” and ABC’s “Good Morning America,” but in recent months has seen its standing in early news slip further. Season to date as of August 30, the overall “CBS Mornings” has fallen about 9% from the year-earlier period to approximately 1.7 million, according to figures from Nielsen.
Both “Today” and “GMA” enjoy viewership of just under 3 million and have seen their audiences increase. The standing of “CBS Mornings” among people between 25 and 54, the crowd most coveted by advertisers in news programming, is eroding noticeably — down 20% from a year ago, to about 278,000 viewers. O’Donnell, represented by UTA, may restore an element to the morning show that it hasn’t had in some time.
King and Burleson stand as strong journalists and winning on-screen personalities, but O’Donnell brings a set of hard-news credentials that are hard to match. O’Donnell has investigated harassment in the U.S. armed forces and snared a hard-to-get interview with Pope Francis. In a sign of the new value she holds at CBS News, O’Donnell is also joining “60 Minutes” as a correspondent and recently launched a podcast centered on women’s health.
And Nate brings curiosity, warmth, spontaneity and a perspective that can take a conversation in a direction none of us expected.” O’Donnell’s arrival at “Mornings” is only one of several new developments viewers will see at the show. Look for “CBS Mornings” to tamp down some of the feature segments it shows and instead dive into live discussions on important topics, says Cibrowski, who wants to bring more “in-the-moment” discussions tied to the news cycle. O’Donnell and anchor Kelly O’Grady recently led a segment tied to the current trial of Lindsay Clancy, who maintains she suffered from postpartum psychosis, which played a role in her strangulation of her three children.
We want to be, first and foremost, informative and helpful to the core audience that’s watching morning television.” He also expects both King and O’Donnell to book important newsmakers from a wide variety of fields for revealing interviews. When asked how soon viewers would start seeing more of these kinds of segments, Cibrowski replied, “Very quickly.” Cibrowski has had prior success with morning TV. He has also logged time as a senior executive at ABC News, where he was among those who helped boost “Good Morning America” over NBC’s “Today” for the first time in years.
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