BREAKING: Top NBC News Host Ditches The Network

One of the most recognizable faces at NBC News is departing after nearly two decades on the desk, a sign that the once-robust mainstream news network, like many of its peers, has fallen on harder times and less relevance than ever.

Chuck Todd, the longtime host of “Meet the Press” who has mostly been off the air since 2023, has told colleagues about his departure, which will end an era of Sunday news. Todd was replaced that year by Kristen Welker after serving in his role for nine years.

According to insiders who spoke with the outlet, Todd has been actively courting other employers in the media landscape after his contract expired toward the end of 2024.

“There’s never a perfect time to leave a place that’s been a professional home for so long, but I’m pretty excited about a few new projects that are on the cusp of going from ‘pie in the sky’ to ‘near reality,’ Todd told NBC News staffers in a memo Friday. “So I’m grateful for the chance to get a jump start on my next chapter during this important moment.”

The “Chuck Toddcast” show he created and manages independently of NBC News would remain part of his repertoire, he added, so “stay tuned for an announcement about its new home soon.” Until he lands somewhere else, the former anchor plans “to continue to share my reporting and unique perspective of covering politics with data and history as important baselines in understanding where we were, where we are and where we’re going.”

“We’re grateful for Chuck’s many contributions to our political coverage during his nearly two-decade career at NBC News and for his deep commitment to Meet the Press and its enduring legacy. We wish him all the best in his next endeavors,” an NBC News spokesperson said in a statement to Variety, which obtained a copy of Todd’s memo.

With the departure of more than a few on-air talents from some of the news industry’s biggest names, it isn’t hard to see why Todd is heartened about setting out on a career change. His entrepreneurial spirit was on display at “Meet the Press,” where he pushed the Sunday show into podcasting and even launched his own film festival, the outlet said.

“Everyone is trying to figure out how to get in front of millennials. I think the millennial generation learns as much visually as they do the old-fashioned way, by the book,” Todd told Variety in 2017 about his hunger to get in the new media game. “We are no longer in the business of telling people how they should consume information. Our job is to provide depth and information in any way they want to consume it.”

In his memo, Todd sounds a note of alarm about the country’s waning trust in long-established news institutions and encouraged those remaining behind to recommit to earning it back from their viewers.

“The media has a lot of work to do to win back the trust of viewers/listeners/readers and I’m convinced the best place to start is from the bottom up. At my core, I’m an entrepreneur — I spent my first 15 years professionally working for the company that started the political newsletter craze that dominates today. And this is a ripe moment,” he said.

“The only way to fix this information ecosystem is to stop whining about the various ways the social media companies are manipulating things and instead roll up our collective sleeves and start with local. National media can’t win trust back without having a robust partner locally and trying to game algorithms is no way to inform and report. People are craving community and that’s something national media or the major social media companies can’t do as well as local media.”