TV Talk: Why so many national news anchor changes?

Although this wasn’t always true, in the modern era it’s safe to conclude anytime there is an upheaval in the general TV order, the reason almost always comes down to one thing: money.

This week, Lester Holt announced his departure later this year from anchoring “NBC Nightly News,” a position he’s held since 2015. Holt will continue to appear on NBC as part of the “Dateline” team but odds are if he had stayed with “Nightly,” it would have been at lower monetary compensation.

Hoda Kotb exited NBC’s “Today” earlier this year after Puck News reported she was asked to take a pay cut on her $20 million annual salary.

“This is the age of the great resetting of TV news contracts,” one veteran media executive told Puck in September. “Everyone is getting their pay cut or their jobs eliminated.”

The reason? The ongoing decline of TV viewership, which means lower ratings, which means less money from advertising (and less income from retransmission fees due to cable cord cutting), which necessitates an economic realignment. Big paydays for boldface names are out, less expensive successors (and/or fewer positions) are in.

Norah O’Donnell left the anchor chair of “CBS Evening News” in January for a senior correspondent role at CBS News (investigations, big interviews) as the network sought to reset the production cost of the nightly newscast at a lower price point with two, non-marquee anchors (John Dickerson, Maurice DuBois) and a correspondent-focused format closer to a newsmagazine than a traditional nightly national newscast.

These changes come as media companies also grapple with the transition to streaming, which brings in fewer advertising dollars than linear TV, similar to what newspapers and magazines began wrestling with 20 years ago in the transition from money-making print to less lucrative online publishing.

Finances surely also play a role in this week’s moves at MSNBC.

MSNBC announced Jen Psaki’s popular Sunday/Monday program will expand to four days a week in April, 9 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, replacing Alex Wagner’s low-rated show when Rachel Maddow returns to hosting the 9 p.m. hour on Mondays only.

MSNBC faces the additional daunting task of surviving once it’s separated from NBC News as NBCUniversal prepares to spin off its declining cable networks (minus Bravo) into a separate company.

The MSNBC anchor shakeup comes shortly after former CNN executive Rebecca Kutler was named MSNBC’s new president. Kutler will have to re-create MSNBC’s news operation without its current reliance on NBC News.

MSNBC also jettisoned Joy Reid’s 7 p.m. show, “The ReidOut,” in favor of a panel show featuring Symone Sanders-Townsend, Michael Steele and Alicia Menendez, who currently host “The Weekend” Saturday and Sunday on MSNBC, an effort to improve the weekday time period’s ratings by emulating the success of Fox News Channel’s daily panel show, “The Five.”

In a highly unusual move, Reid’s colleagues spoke out on MSNBC against MSNBC’s decision to fire Reid.

“Personally, I think it is a bad mistake to let her walk out the door,” said Maddow, who also sounded off on changes behind the camera, including some of the network’s “most experienced, most talented” producers facing layoffs and the humiliating task of reapplying for their jobs on new programs. “That has never happened at this scale in this way before when it comes to programming changes. Presumably, because it’s not the right way to treat people. It is inefficient and it’s unnecessary and it drops the bottom out of whether or not people feel like this is a good place to work. So we don’t generally do things that way.”

MSNBC did not respond to a request for comment, but a source familiar said there will not be widespread layoffs at MSNBC; personnel will be reallocated to support new programs in an almost one-to-one ratio of the jobs impacted with new positions to reapply for. Those jobs will be posted internally first.

What’s currently playing out nationally mirrors what viewers have seen locally: Pittsburgh TV stations hire less experienced (re: less expensive) reporters who sometimes transition into anchor roles that would have been out of reach so early in their careers a decade or two ago.

If it all feels like diminishing returns for the TV news business, it’s because it is. Elevating lesser known (or sometimes unknown) anchors who have not been around long enough to earn viewers’ trust, locally or nationally, does those anchors no favors when the news business is often in the crosshairs of political leaders who refer to the media as “the enemy of the people.”

That political valence also surfaced in MSNBC anchors’ reactions to the network’s changes. Hours after President Donald Trump proclaimed the CEO of NBCUniversal’s parent company, Comcast, “a lowlife” and called MSNBC a “corrupt operation,” MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace said she felt “despair” about Reid’s firing.

“The only thing that chips away at that for me, is that despair is the autocrat’s tool,” Wallace said. “It’s their most effective weapon. It costs nothing, it’s easy to deploy, it’s contagious, and then it puts in motion all the actions they want: hopelessness, isolation, exasperation, giving up. The only reason I will not wallow in what I feel about you leaving is because I think that’s what they want.”

Maddow, pushing back against the decision of her MSNBC boss, ended her Monday night show, acknowledging it’s a difficult time in the news business, but she said it doesn’t need to be this difficult.

“We welcome new voices to this place and some familiar voices to new hours,” Maddow said. “It’s going to be great, honestly, and we want to grow, and succeed, and reach more people than ever, and be resilient and stay here forever. I also believe, and I bet you believe, the way to get there is by treating people well. Finding good people, good colleagues, doing good work with them and having their back. That we could do a lot better on. A lot better.”

Channel surfing

A judge ruled the estate of Michael Crichton’s lawsuit against Warner Bros. over Pittsburgh-set “The Pitt” can proceed. … Season two of HBO’s “The Last of Us” debuts at 9 p.m. April 13. … Princess Red (Kylie Cantrall) and Princess Chloe (Malia Baker) will return in a Disney Channel/Disney+ sequel to the 2024 cable movie “Descendants: The Rise of Red.”