Lester Holt’s Surprise Announcement on NBC Nightly News—Here’s What Viewers Need to Know

Veteran journalist Lester Holt is officially stepping away from the anchor chair at “NBC Nightly News” after a decade and will devote himself full-time to “Dateline NBC,” the network’s long-form investigative franchise. In a candid Variety interview published 8 May, the 65-year-old broadcaster said the choice wasn’t a sudden epiphany but a career recalibration: “I decided that I needed to come off the ‘Nightly’ gig, but I still had gas in the tank.” He added that longer storytelling will let him “flex different news muscles,” with many episodes now months in the making. Holt first assumed the “Nightly News” helm in 2015 amid the Brian Williams controversy and quickly became one of America’s most-watched evening anchors. Over the past 10 years he steered viewers through elections, pandemics and global conflicts, helping the broadcast attract a nightly audience that still tops 6 million in an era of cord-cutting. NBC confirmed that Tom Llamas—currently the host of the streaming program “Top Story with Tom Llamas” and a regular fill-in for Holt—will succeed him as anchor and managing editor later this summer. Llamas, 45, will juggle both roles, signaling NBC’s strategy to bridge linear TV and its growing digital platforms. The succession plan keeps Holt firmly in the NBC family while positioning the network to court younger, streaming-first audiences. Industry analysts note that true-crime and deep-dive documentaries—“Dateline’s” bread and butter—rank among the most binge-watched genres on Peacock and other services, giving Holt a fresh way to reach cord-cutters searching for premium investigative content. For loyal “Nightly News” viewers, Holt’s journalistic rigor won’t vanish; instead, it shifts to hour-plus specials that can unpack complex stories—from cold cases to cutting-edge scientific breakthroughs—with the trademark calm authority that earned him the nickname “the most-trusted man in news.” NBC has not released Holt’s first post-transition assignment, but insiders say multiple multipart investigations are already in production. As he told Variety, “There’s always going to be an audience for fact-based, tell-it-like-it-is journalism—and I plan to keep delivering it.”