Thursday marked the final episode of the CBS Evening News in its Norah O’Donnell era following five and a half years in which she anchored the newscast during some of the more consequential times in our country’s history, but also oversaw CBS cementing itself in third-place for network news and plenty of liberal bias (such as these biased openings towards the end of the 2024 campaign).
Unsurprisingly, the final episode featured plenty of empty platitudes from O’Donnell about CBS’s importance and a cameo from billionaire Democratic Party surrogate and CBS Mornings co-host Gayle King’s best friend, Oprah Winfrey.
O’Donnell began the final segment by saying she had no clue “who it is” that’d “help us look back.”
After the video, O’Donnell said it was “the honor of a lifetime to anchor this legacy broadcast” as “the CBS Evening News is, for good reason, the longest-running evening newscast in America and it is powered by the finest journalists around the world, the correspondents, producers, researchers and crews who work tirelessly to bring you the news every night and that won’t change, because journalism matters.”
She explained she “know[s] that because I have heard it from so many of you, our viewers” and, having given the predictable flag-wave for journalism, she signed off as colleagues, family, and friends gathered around her desk at CBS’s D.C. bureau:
So, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for trusting us and welcoming hard news with heart into your homes. I will miss you too, but I will see you on CBS News programs, including Mornings, 60 Minutes, Sunday Morning, and in prime time. So, for the final time, that’s tonight’s CBS Evening News. I owe it all to everybody I work with. Honestly, love you. Good night. [CHEERS AND APPLAUSE]
As for the video in between, Winfrey popped up on-screen to wish O’Donnell congratulations as she had “so much to be proud of.”
“Your work as the anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News has not only won awards, but, more importantly, has made such a difference and informed our nation. It is impossible to highlight five years of masterful storytelling, but let’s give it a shot,” she added.
Winfrey really did start at the beginning with her first, second, and third show (which of course we went over in real-time with a fine-tooth comb).
The next section featured her reporting on sexual assault in the military and then a few of the locales she anchored the show from to cover mass shootings and natural disasters inside the U.S. and overseas for stories such as Israel for the October 7, 2023 aftermath.
Winfrey noted she was “committed to honoring America’s heroes and telling their stories,” “made” “history” with her Pope Francis interviw, and laughably asserted she “asked the tough questions to the people in charge.”
On that last point, our Geoffrey Dickens’s look-back at O’Donnell’s career proved otherwise.
It wound down with fluffier moments ahead of Winfrey’s closing take, starting with this: “Through countless hours of breaking news and nearly 1,300 broadcasts, Norah, you’ve treated each story with grace and compassion....putting world events into context...and a whole lot of smiles along the way.”
Back on camera, Winfrey wrapped with best wishes for this new role as a “senior correspondent” (so think Diane Sawyer’s occasional surfacing on ABC):
Whew, Norah, you did all that and more. You have so much to be proud of. And you’re only getting started. So, we all cannot wait to see all you accomplish as CBS News senior correspondent. We’ll be watching. You know I’ve been watching, calling you about those suits and I will continue to watch. And we’re all cheering you on always.
To see the relevant CBS transcript from January 24, click here.
