Lester Holt is opening up about leaving “NBC Nightly News” for full time duties at “Dateline.”
In a Variety interview published May 8, the longtime “Nightly” anchor opened up about his choice to leave the desk.
“It wasn’t like one moment of epiphany,” Holt told Variety. “I never saw myself doing this job forever,” he added, saying that he “decided that I needed to come off the ‘Nightly’ gig, but I still had gas in the tank.” He later continued: “People say it’s been a great run, it’s like, well, I’m still running.”
Holt, 65, announced that he would depart his role after a decade for “Dateline” in February. In his new role, Holt looks forward to flexing “some different news muscles,” although he has been a longtime member of the “Dateline” family.
Lester Holt is stepping down as anchor of ‘NBC Nightly News’
“We’re still doing journalism, but these are hour and two-hour shows we’re doing. Some of the stories you’ll see me doing will be months in the making,” he told the entertainment-focused outlet, explaining that he will have more time to tell stories.
In 2015, Holt was named anchor of “Nightly” after his predecessor, Brian Williams, was temporarily suspended from NBC News for falsely claiming that he had been in a helicopter hit by enemy fire during the Iraq War. An investigation also found that Williams embellished experiences covering other events during his time at the news organization.
“I don’t want to say it was a scary time, but it was an unsettling time,” Holt said of taking the “Nightly” gig. “No one wants to necessarily get a job on the back of a crisis, if you want to call it that. But it was what it was. And some of the best advice that I ever got was to be ready for doors to open at times you don’t expect.”
Holt told Variety the “biggest challenge” about joining “Dateline” is “being where viewers are going to be — not where they are today — where they’re going to be in two weeks, in a month from now.”
“I think that’s what all of us in this industry right now are focused on,” he said. “We firmly believe there’s always going to be an audience for a fact-based, tell-it-like-it-is, smart-analysis kind of a broadcast.” Still, he believes in “Nightly News” and the traditional format that helped make him a household name.
“I always smile when people, even today, predict the death of the format,” Holt said. “I do think that there is value in this tradition. And what is it, 15 to 18 million people kind of validate that, watching the three major newscasts every night.”
Who is replacing Lester Holt on ‘NBC Nightly News’?
In March, NBC revealed that longtime heir apparent Tom Llamas would replace Holt on “Nightly News.”
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Llamas, who has more than 25 years of experience in broadcast journalism, has served as fill-in anchor for Holt at “NBC Nightly News” since 2021, and he anchors the streaming newscast “Top Story with Tom Llamas,” which he will continue on weeknights.
He is a senior national correspondent for the network and also reports for the “Today” show. Llamas previously worked at ABC, where he anchored “World News Tonight” on weekends and served as fill-in anchor for David Muir.
Contributing: Brendan Morrow
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Why is Lester Holt leaving ‘NBC Nightly’ for ‘Dateline’?
