Veteran Holt in unique position
NEW YORK — Lester Holt’s first report card as NBC’s choice to fill in for suspended anchor Brian Williams as “Nightly News” anchor found him maintaining the network’s ratings lead, although the competition has tightened.
The understated understudy has worked without a break since Williams took himself off the newscast on Feb. 7 and was suspended for six months by NBC News on Feb. 10. The network continues to investigate Williams for misrepresenting his experiences as a journalist.
“Nightly News” with Holt averaged 9.43 million viewers last week, the Nielsen company said. ABC’s “World News Tonight” had 9.03 million viewers and the “CBS evening News” had 7.63 million. The 400,000-viewer advantage over ABC last week is smaller than the average 587,000-viewer edge by NBC for the season that began last September.
Holt, 55, has been with NBC News since 2000 and before that worked as a news anchor in Chicago for 14 years. Besides being Williams’ chief sub for the past two years, he co-anchors “Dateline NBC,” “Weekend Today” and “Nightly News” on the weekends.
He’s been placed in a uniquely awkward position, asked to right the ship for a company desperate to get out of the headlines, not knowing whether it’s a temporary job or one that could become permanent.
“It’s tough,” said veteran news executive Rick Kaplan, once Holt’s boss when he was MSNBC president. “He has to be very careful, because until Brian’s future is outlined very clearly, Lester is just doing the network a favor in a way.”
He said Holt has unassailable credentials, works hard and does the job without drawing attention to himself, Kaplan said.
“What NBC needs is quiet competence, and Lester has that in abundance,” Kaplan said. “Lester is someone everybody can be proud of. He is somebody the people of NBC News can be proud of and rally behind, because that’s what they need right now.”
Holt is choosing to keep his head down and do the job, not speaking publicly about his role. He’s an accomplished bass guitar player, but he’s not going on entertainment programs to show his chops or swap stories about the news business. Frequent appearances on talk shows led to trouble for Williams.
