Brokaw to Step Aside in 2004

Tom Brokaw’s reign as anchor of “The NBC Nightly News” will come to an end after the next presidential election in 2004, with NBC News announcing Tuesday Brokaw’s plans to step aside at that time as well as the official anointment of Brian Williams as his replacement.

The announcement of Brokaw’s two-year contract extension and Williams’ eventual ascension puts to rest uncertainty over who would be in the anchor chair for NBC’s flagship broadcast--which has dominated its rivals for many years--after Brokaw’s current contract expires at the end of the summer.

It also gives Williams, 43, who anchors a nightly newscast on sister network MSNBC, some assurances about his future after many years as Brokaw’s official substitute and presumed heir apparent. His contract was up at the end of the year, and sources say Williams has agreed to a new deal that runs more than five years.

NBC becomes the first of the three major broadcast networks with an announced succession plan for the men who have led their newscasts for two decades. Recently, CBS News expressed interest in Williams, but there isn’t necessarily any near-term opening there, with Dan Rather close to signing a contract extension.

ABC News, meanwhile, is negotiating to renew Peter Jennings’ contract, which expires this summer. His broadcast has been gaining on NBC’s in the ratings, but contract talks have been reported to be tense, with speculation that Jennings might be asked to take a pay cut at a time when many others at ABC have been asked to do so. ABC News President David Westin last week declined to comment on the status of the talks and said the network might not formally announce a new deal with Jennings even if it secures one, in line with Jennings’ own desire to keep his situation private.

Brokaw, who is 62, has been NBC’s lead anchor since 1983 and had hinted broadly for some time that he might be ready to step down. The anchor said Tuesday that the events of Sept. 11 and the subsequent war on terror had changed his feelings. “I am here because I couldn’t walk away from this story,” he told a press conference, adding that he had been energized “psychologically, physically, professionally.”

The 2004 date was picked, he said, because it allowed him to report on one more election cycle but still let the network plan for a future with Williams. “The last thing we wanted to do was lose him,” Brokaw said of his successor.

NBC declined to comment on terms of either man’s deal but said Brokaw had not been asked to take a salary cut and that he would remain at the network after leaving “Nightly News,” reporting prime-time specials. An avid outdoorsman whose recent books on the World War II generation have been a publishing phenomenon, Brokaw said he had no plans to go to the “anchorman’s rest home and take soft food.”

Williams’ role at NBC will change before the anchor transition. His nightly MSNBC newscast, which has not been a ratings success, will leave the news and opinion channel and shift exclusively to NBC’s financial cable channel, CNBC, where it will air at 7 p.m. Pacific time. NBC News President Neal Shapiro said the program would be a better fit with CNBC, which currently airs reruns of the show. Williams will also be seen more frequently on “NBC Nightly News” and will report more often for NBC from the field.

Brokaw dismissed recent speculation that the network evening newscasts, despite drawing a combined 30 million viewers a night, are becoming increasingly irrelevant thanks to competition from several all-news cable networks. Viewers turned to the networks after Sept. 11 as well as during the confusion that surrounded the results of the 2000 presidential election, he said, and the nightly newscast is still the engine driving daily news-gathering at the networks.

Williams, who has made no secret of wanting the job for many years, noted that the success of Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation” books demonstrates that the three network anchors have “become more than what they do at 6:30 in the evening. It’s a big position still in this country.”