10 Shortest-Serving Evening News Anchors of the Last 50 Years
CBS Mornings star Tony Dokoupil is the latest journalist to be named anchor of the CBS Evening News, set to inherit the desk on January 5 after current anchors Maurice DuBois and John Dickerson’s exits later this month.
“Tony is what everyone wants in an evening-news anchor — authentic, compassionate, unafraid,” CBS News President Tom Cibrowski said last week as the network announced Dokoupil’s promotion. “He connects instantly, whether he’s talking with world leaders or with families navigating difficult news in their own backyards.”
But we’ve heard that kind of high praise about evening-news anchors who didn’t last long, and Dokoupil has the unenviable task of pulling CBS Evening News out of third place in the ratings, where it has languished for years. DuBois and Dickerson, his immediate predecessors, are leaving their posts after less than 11 months.
Amid this latest recasting, we’re rounding up the shortest-serving former CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, and ABC World News Tonight anchors of the last half-century — permanent weekday anchors, mind you, not interim selections. According to our research, those anchors are…
10. ABC’s Diane Sawyer: 4 years, 8 months
Dokoupil isn’t the first morning-show cohost to make the jump to evening news. Sawyer, a Good Morning America alum, did the same in December 2009 when she succeeded Charles Gibson, her old GMA cohost, on ABC World News Tonight. She held that post until August 2014, when she moved into a contributor role at ABC News.
9. ABC’s Charles Gibson: 3 years, 6 months
Following the Woodruff-Vargas era of ABC World News Tonight (detailed below), Gibson got the anchor desk in May 2006. Three and a half years later, he retired from full-time employment at the news organization. “This has been my professional home for almost 35 years,” he wrote in an email to colleagues as he announced his decision. “And I love this news department, and all who work in it, to the depths of my soul.”
8. CBS’ Connie Chung: 23 months
For just under two years, starting in June 1993, Chung joined Dan Rather at the CBS Evening News desk. But the onscreen pairing lasted less than two years, and Chung was let go in May 1995 as ratings floundered. “I feel that I am being asked to take the fall for the failure of the CBS Evening News, and I simply don’t see the justification for it,” she told the Los Angeles Times at the time.
7. ABC’s Barbara Walters: 21 months
Walters made history when she joined Harry Reasoner at what was then called ABC Evening Newsin October 1976, thus becoming the first woman to co-anchor a national primetime newscast. Walters and Reasoner continued reporting news together until July 1978, at which point the program was retooled with a new name — ABC World News Tonight — and new anchors.
6. CBS’ Jeff Glor: 17 months
After making a name for himself on CBS’s morning programming and on the Sunday edition of the network’s evening news, Glor became the CBS Evening News anchor in December 2017. The Glor-y days ended 17 months later, however, when CBS News management shook up the organization and installed Norah O’Donnell as the Evening News’ new anchor.
5. NBC’s Roger Mudd: 16 months
The only former NBC Nightly News anchor not to have the job for about a decade or more in the last half century was Mudd. He and Tom Brokaw both started as co-anchors in April 1982 — Brokaw reporting from New York City; Mudd doing so from Washington, D.C. — but Mudd left the show nearly 17 months later as executives consolidated the operation in NYC. Brokaw then anchored the program solo for another two decades.
3 (tie). CBS’s Maurice DuBois & John Dickerson: 10 months
DuBois and Dickerson brought back two-anchor energy to broadcast evening news this January, but amid new leadership at CBS News and struggling ratings for the broadcast, Dickerson announced in October that he’d leave CBS Evening News at the end of the year. DuBois followed suit in December, leading to Dokoupil’s promotion. Both Dickerson and DuBois will reportedly be off the air by December 20, less than 11 months after they started.
1 (tie). ABC’s Elizabeth Vargas & Bob Woodruff: 4 months
Vargas and Woodruff teamed up for broadcast evening news’ first co-anchor team in more than a decade when they started their ABC World News Tonight tenure in January 2006. That same month, however, Woodruff was seriously injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq. Vargas helmed the newscast solo, until she took a maternity leave that May, officially ending the Vargas–Woodruff era.
Watchlist Easy access to only the shows you care about — all in one simple place
Alerts Only important notifications — when a show is returning, when it becomes available to stream, and more.
Special Offers Exclusive products we release related to your favorite shows and streaming services