It's Official: Brian Williams Will Remain at NBC News
by Marisa Guthrie
Brian Williams will remain at the news division of NBCUniversal, but he will not resume his anchor duties of NBC’s Nightly News when his six-month, unpaid suspension ends in August. The announcement, making an expected deal official, came Thursday morning from NBC News chairman Andy Lack and NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke. (Williams will serve as an anchor at the cable network MSNBC.)
The resolution concludes nearly four months of negotiations between NBCUni executives and Williams’ representative, Washington attorney Robert Barnett. (Interestingly, Barnett also represented Ann Curry in her thorny 2012 transition from Today show co-host to correspondent at NBC News. Curry left the news division earlier this year at the conclusion of her contract.)
NBC News Chairman Andy Lack Not Convinced Brian Williams Can Return
Williams has been on MSNBC before; he anchored a flagship 8 p.m. newscast at the network’s inception in 1996, when it was a training ground for NBC News journalists. Lack presided over the launch of MSNBC during his first stint with the company. And it was Lack who oversaw the eventual passing of the baton on Nightly from Tom Brokaw to Williams.
But Williams’ new role at the company marks a precipitous fall for one of the biggest stars in the news business, and one who had seemingly carved out a unique niche as a favorite of late-night comedians, including David Letterman and Jon Stewart. He also made cameo appearances onTina Fey’s 30 Rock and was the only TV news anchor to ever host Saturday Night Live. Of course, those appearances turned out to be instrumental in Williams’ downfall as his habit of embellishing for late-night audiences were saved in perpetuity to be replayed and picked apart.
Williams signed a five-year, $50 million deal with NBC News in late 2014, barely two months before scandal erupted in early February after U.S. service men began to vocally question Williams’ repeated accounts of a reporting trip in Iraq in 2003 during which Williams claimed he was in a Black Hawk that was downed by RPG fire. From there, NBC’s internal investigation turned up several additional questionable stories from Williams during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and from Egypt’s Tahrir Square in 2011. The investigation also raised questions about Williams’ claim that he was sent a piece of the downed helicopter used during the Osama bin Laden kill mission.
Sources say that throughout the negotiations Williams expressed a strong desire to regain his old job at Nightly News, where he was also managing editor. And Lack, who has maintained a friendship with Williams and other NBC News stars, had repeated and tough face-to-face meetings with Williams during which he let the anchor know that that scenario was unlikely. A sticking point during the talks was Williams’ reluctance to express an full-throated apology, something both Lack and Burke insisted upon, say sources. An aggravating factor in Williams’ path to return has been his pointed lack of support among the rank-and-file at NBC News. Meanwhile Lack had continually reassured staffers that his first responsibility was to the news division as a whole.
Staffers at NBC News expressed incredulity that Williams can ever repair his career. And many point out that his new job at MSNBC seems to involve the skills he never did master including reporting and live anchoring.
Meanwhile the historical connotations of Holt’s ascendency to the anchor chair - making him among the faces of the NBC News brand - has not been lost on NBC executives. Holt - a well-liked, hard-working and talented live news anchor - is on a very short list of African-Americans who have solo anchored an evening newscast.
On Thursday morning, Williams’ verified Twitter account still listed him as anchor and managing editor @NBCNightlyNews.
Note: This piece was updated by a Yahoo TV editor on June 18.
