Rumors Have Williams Returning to CNN

Is Mary Alice Williams talking to Cable News Network about returning? Appearing as a guest Tuesday on the “McLaughlin” talk show on the CNBC cable channel in New York, Williams would neither confirm nor deny talks with CNN. But she said that she was in negotiations with NBC News executives about her future there.

Williams, who recently returned to NBC from maternity leave, had been substituting regularly for Tom Brokaw on “NBC Nightly News,” but Jane Pauley recently has been filling that slot. And “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” the NBC News magazine show for which Williams was an anchor, was moved into the entertainment division.

There has been speculation at CNN that Williams, who was wooed away by NBC, might want to return to CNN, where she was both an executive and a principal anchor.