MSNBC has named Stephanie Ruhle as the replacement for Brian Williams as host of The 11th Hour program, network president Rashida Jones confirmed Thursday. 

Ruhle, who currently anchors the news network’s 9 a.m. hour, will fill the hole left by Williams’ departure from the network in December. The network’s Morning Joe series will expand to four hours to include the 9 a.m. time slot, Jones said in an internal memo.

Jones — who took over as MSNBC president in January 2021 — said in the memo that the moves “strengthen our lineup and set us up for success as we enter what is sure to be a consequential year.”  

The full memo appears below: 

All, 

I’m delighted to share two significant programming updates that strengthen our lineup and set us up for success as we enter what is sure to be a consequential year.

Morning Joe, our premier morning program for the last 15 years, will be expanding to four hours, to 10 a.m. This expansion will give us an opportunity to extend the reach of the program, which has become so well known for its signature perspective and analysis, as well as its news-making exclusive interviews with top lawmakers, senior government officials and thought leaders. 

Stephanie Ruhle, who had been anchoring the 9 a.m. slot, will take over as host of The 11th Hour, bringing her business acumen, hard-hitting interview style and original reporting to the viewers in that slot. Since joining MSNBC in 2016, Stephanie has been a staple of our dayside anchor team and a trusted voice on topics at the intersection of politics, finance and international business. In addition to bringing her decades-long experience to The 11th Hour, Stephanie will continue to appear across all platforms as NBC News Senior Business Analyst. 

Please join me in congratulating the Morning Joe and The 11th Hour teams on these exciting new opportunities.

Veteran NBC News anchor Brian Williams, who had successfully rehabilitated his career with a popular 11 p.m. nightly news show on MSNBC, will leave the news organization he has served the last 28 years by the end of 2021.

”This is the end of a chapter and the beginning of another,“ Williams said in a statement. ”There are many things I want to do, and I'll pop up again somewhere.”

The vagueness of that statement accompanies the fact that subscription streaming service CNN Plus is currently ramping up and looking for talent. But any connection is mere speculation at this point. 

Williams has hosted the popular nightly news and political discussion show The 11th Hour on MSNBC for the last five years. His contract with NBC News is set to expire at the end of the year. 

CNN reported in August that Williams wants to move off the late-night hour. Also notable: cable news ratings are way down year over year across the board. And one more notable thing to mention: NBC News just dug deep — $30 million a year deep  — to renew MSNBC on-air star Rachel Maddow.

Williams was MSNBC‘s top anchor when the news channel launched back in 1996, and he ultimately assumed the prestige role of anchoring NBC Nightly News. However, his tenure was cut short by accusations that he‘d exaggerated stories about himself in interviews. 

MSNBC anchor Brian Williams is narrating a new podcast based on a classic book about journalism that was published 20 years ago.

The original 1998 book, We Interrupt This Broadcast: The Stories that Stopped Our Lives by Joe Garner, looks at how TV news covered big stories. It was unique because it included a CD with recordings of those famous newscasts and newscasters.

Now in the age of podcasts, Garner decided it was time again to explain how big stories get covered with We Interrupt This Broadcast: Before It Was History, It Was News, produced by i4 Media Ventures.

“It is riveting stuff,” Williams, anchor of MSNBC’s The 11th Hour, told Broadcasting+Cable. “This will take you back — or teach you for the first time — about a world where there were but three networks. No one was covering news 24 hours a day in those early days. These are the moments when people said, ‘Get in here, you've got to see this.’ These are the moments when people called their friends and family to say, 'Are you watching this? Turn on the TV’ '”

The podcast also comes at a time when journalism is under fire from political polarization, malicious misinformation and corporate financial pressures. It casts the people who make the news in a heroic light.

“The foundation of the series is the humanity that is broadcast journalism,” Garner said. “So as long as we still have men and women out there to ferret out the stories and to tell the stories, then we'll always have stories. Because that's what, that's what this series is all about — it’s storytelling.” 

Revisiting a New Set of Stories

The new podcast, hosted by veteran anchor Bill Kurtis, is different from the book.

“I thought it would be compelling to go back and revisit some of these events from broadcast journalism history. but tell the story exclusively from the perspective of the broadcast journalists who covered them,” Garner said.

Some of the events happened a long time ago, so rounding up people involved in covering them wasn’t always easy. 

The podcast launches this week, coinciding with the July 16-24 anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon mission, one of the stories that is the subject of an episode of the podcast. On that day in 1969, half of all the TVs in the U.S. were watching Walter Cronkite, legendary anchorman for CBS News and the author of the forward of Garner’s book back in 1998.

“The story to me was, how do we get a television signal from the lunar surface onto television sets in living rooms around the world?” Garner said. Stanley Lebar, the Westinghouse engineer who designed the special camera had died, but Dick Nafzger, who worked at NASA and was responsible for receiving the signal was living in Naples, Fla. He also found Joel Barnow, who directed the CBS telecast and Cronkite’s desk assistant during the telecast, Mike Russo, now Father Mike Russo.

In some cases, Garner had to rely on archival interviews from sources, including the TV Academy, to tell his behind-the-scenes stories.

The podcast’s first season of 12 episodes features some rare and never-before-heard recordings from stories including 

Garner is planning to do six seasons of We Interrupt This Broadcast. The episodes cover the Hindenburg disaster; the D-Day invasion; the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; the shooting of President Ronald Reagan; the 1992 Los Angeles riots, after the Rodney King verdict; the Columbine High School shooting; the 2000 presidential election; and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The podcast also imagines how TV might have covered the Nat Turner slave rebellion and the passage of the 19th amendment, which granted women the right to vote.

Garner and Williams see no shortage of events that would make good episodes of the podcast in the future.

Williams said the memorable stories are the reason some people get into TV news. “We get into broadcast journalism for the love of the craft and for our interest in the world and for when things aren’t perfect,” he said. “I think it’s appropriate to judge us during those moments.”

Sometimes, Williams noted, it’s “odd” when the series examined a breaking news story in which he was involved in covering, such as the crash of TWA Flight 800 two nights after the debut of MSNBC, or the death of Princess Diana.

Partisanship Changed the Picture

The rise of TV networks that are viewed as left-wing or right-wing has changed the way both viewers and broadcasters look at the news.

“I understand that we now view way too much of daily life in America through either a red or blue lens,” Williams said. “I would like to think that all of the [networks on the air when called upon to cover a cataclysm or a national tragedy would do so as a news organization and absent ideology.”

Kurtis said journalists are more essential than ever in this politicized atmosphere. 

“As far as I’m concerned, they’re the last folks standing in this crazy world of Trump,” Kurtis said.

“When the grades are given out, we've made advances in the quality of the young reporters who are coming up,” said Kurtis, a former anchor in Chicago and for CBS News also well-known as the host of news and crime documentaries for A&E. “I've been watching through the Trump years. I don't think I’ve seen reporters on camera, you know, make a mistake. I don't mean factually, but just in their delivery.  They've been trained so well, It's very impressive. I don't know what I could do if I was starting now.”

One effect of this podcast could be to raise the profile and reputation of TV news and encourage people to enlist.

“I think they’ll rush to the journalism schools for the same reason they did after Watergate,” Kurtis said. “They can affect change. Some go to law school, but this way journalism is standing tall, and I think they’ll fill the ranks.”

“I’ll second what BIll said,” Garner added. He noted that in the podcasts, the journalists involved question how well they covered each story. “They debate the job they did and are very candid about it,” he said. “In the heat of battle sometimes you don’t get it right, but it’s not because you didn’t want to get it right. And that comes out in almost every episode.”

Garner noted that much of what journalism is going through today, Cronkite foresaw in the forward he wrote for the original edition of We Interrupt This Broadcast.

“Today, news people in general are far better educated than ever, many holding advanced degrees,” Cronkite wrote. “With strong academic backgrounds, they have been far more aggressive in covering politics, business, and the social movements of our time. At the same time, this potential is often nullified by the problems facing the journalistic profession, problems which impact the core of our democratic society. Today’s journalists face continual pressures from corporate ownerships and stockholders to dramatically increase profits. This requirement often means less reporters, writers, and editors covering more territory. It can also push good journalists in the direction of the sensational, the entertainment aspects of the news. The end result is a press lacking a sense of public service which is the vital, fundamental component the press contributes to the nation’s welfare.

“Those who get most of their news from television probably are not getting enough information to intelligently exercise their voting franchise in a democratic system,” the prescient anchor continued. “As Thomas Jefferson said, the nation that expects to be ignorant and free expects what never can and never will be. We can bring that up-to-date and amplify it a bit: the nation whose population depends on the explosively compressed headline service of television news can expect to be exploited by the demagogues and dictators who prey upon the semi-informed.”

Williams was in the news himself in 2015, when he was suspended as anchor of the NBC Nightly News for misrepresenting events when he covered the Iraq War, contributing to the mistrust of mainstream media news. Was doing this podcast an opportunity to make amends?

Viewer Education Effort

“If we do this, right,  this will be a tool to educate people about what we do for a living,” he said. “It will be a tool to make people revisit and think about our history, where we've been, where we're headed, times when we got it wrong and, hopefully, those will be overwhelmed by the times when we got it right.”

Williams said he had avoided the “podcast craze” up till now. “I could not honestly come up with a concept that interested me enough to take the plunge,” he said. 

“There's no shortage of them,” he said. “My theory is that every American will have a podcast by 2050, and we will have no time to listen to each other's because we'll be too busy producing our own.” 

Some of the podcasts Williams listens to and likes are Smartless —  “invariably smart and funny,” he said — and “anything that Jon Meacham does, most recently an episode on the development of the Salk vaccine, which was “fantastic.”

“I find myself telling my friends who are fans of podcasts, like I am, that they'll want to listen to this,” Williams said. “You're going to want to hear this and I realized, I'm proud of this and that's a great feeling to want to share it and to look forward to knowing this is coming into people's ears and phones and lives. So I hope and trust it'll be a great ride.”

Veteran TV news anchor Brian Williams will host a late night news program for MSNBC beginning Sept. 6.

The series, The 11th Hour With Brian Williams, will provide a “unique” look at the major political stories of the day, will be the first regularly scheduled show for the former ‘NBC Nightly News’ anchor on MSNBC since he joined the network a year ago.

The series is scheduled to run between Labor Day and the November Presidential election, said MSNBC.

Last year Williams lost his NBC Nightly News anchor slot after inaccurately recalling a story from the Iraq war in which he claimed he was on a helicopter that was shot at by ground fire.

“This new assignment is a natural extension of the hundreds of hours of political coverage Brian has anchored through this campaign cycle so far,” said MSNBC President Phil Griffin in a statement. “He and Rachel Maddow and the team have been great on the big nights, and now he’ll build on MSNBC’s primetime momentum by taking us live into the 11pm hour every night.”

MSNBC, bolstered by its Summer Olympics programming as well as its coverage of the 2016 Presidential campaign, finished the summer averaging 1.1 million viewers in primetime, up 86% compared to summer 2015, according to Nielsen. 

Suspended NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams will return to the air in August on MSNBC, with Lester Holt officially taking over Williams' anchor duties at Nightly News, NBC News announced.

Williams, who was suspended earlier this year for inaccurately recalling a story from the Iraq war in which he claimed he was on a helicopter that was shot at by ground fire, will head up the cable news network’s breaking news coverage, according to NBC.

“Brian now has the chance to earn back everyone’s trust. His excellent work over twenty-two years at NBC News has earned him that opportunity,” said Andy Lack, chairman of NBC News and MSNBC.

Lester Holt, who had been filling in for Williams since his suspension, has officially been named the new anchor of NBC Nightly News.

Willams joins a network struggling from the ratings front. MSNBC in May posted a 14% decline in its primetime audience with 470,000 viewers, well behind competitors CNN (587,000 viewers) and Fox News (1.6 million viewers), according to Nielsen. 

Multiple news outlets are reporting that NBC plans to reinstate Brian Williams after he ends a six-month suspension, but that he will shift to other roles, likely at MSNBC, and will not be reinstated as anchor of the NBC Nightly News.

Reports first by CNN, then added onto by The New York Timesand picked up elsewhere, citing sources familiar with the moves, said an internal investigation had led to an agreement that would keep Williams on at the news organization but leave Lester Holt as anchor of the Nightly News. Holt has been filling in as anchor since Williams's suspension in February. NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke brought former NBC News leader Andy Lack back to oversee NBC News and MSNBC in March as the controversy unfolded. Comcast owns NBCUniversal.

NBC has not confirmed the moves as yet. 

NBC News is suspending Brian Williams for six months. Lester Holt will remain in the anchor chair of Nightly News in Williams' absence. 

The suspension of the Nightly News anchor, who on Saturday announced that he was taking a leave of absence, comes four days after NBC News president Deborah Turness said the network was conducting an internal investigation into the veracity of Williams' account of an Iraqi war story.

"We have decided today to suspend Brian Williams as Managing Editor and Anchor of NBC Nightly News for six months. The suspension will be without pay and is effective immediately," said Turness. "We let Brian know of our decision earlier today. Lester Holt will continue to substitute Anchor the NBC Nightly News."

The swirl of controversy began last week after military newspaper Stars and Stripes found that Williams had been inaccurately recalling a story from the Iraq war in which he claimed he was on a helicopter that was shot at by ground fire.

Williams admitted to Stars and Stripes that he “misremembered” the 2003 tale, It's a story he has been relating for more than a decade, including to CBS Late Show host David Letterman in 2013. Williams apologized on the Feb. 4 broadcast of the Nightly News. 

Williams also came under fire for a 2005 Hurricane Katrina story in which he said he saw a dead body floating in the French Quarter.

Under Williams, who recently signed a new multiyear contract, Nightly News has been the most-watched evening newscast for over five years running.

Torness sent out the following memo to NBC News personnel on Tuesday night:

All,

We have decided today to suspend Brian Williams as Managing Editor and Anchor of NBC Nightly News for six months. The suspension will be without pay and is effective immediately.  We let Brian know of our decision earlier today. Lester Holt will continue to substitute Anchor the NBC Nightly News.

Our review, which is being led by Richard Esposito working closely with NBCUniversal General Counsel Kim Harris, is ongoing, but I think it is important to take you through our thought process in coming to this decision. 

While on Nightly News on Friday, January 30, 2015, Brian misrepresented events which occurred while he was covering the Iraq War in 2003. It then became clear that on other occasions Brian had done the same while telling that story in other venues. This was wrong and completely inappropriate for someone in Brian’s position.

In addition, we have concerns about comments that occurred outside NBC News while Brian was talking about his experiences in the field.

As Managing Editor and Anchor of Nightly News, Brian has a responsibility to be truthful and to uphold the high standards of the news division at all times.

Steve Burke, Pat Fili and I came to this decision together. We felt it would have been wrong to disregard the good work Brian has done and the special relationship he has forged with our viewers over 22 years.  Millions of Americans have turned to him every day, and he has been an important and well-respected part of our organization.

As I’m sure you understand, this was a very hard decision. Certainly there will be those who disagree.  But we believe this suspension is the appropriate and proportionate action.

This has been a difficult time. But NBC News is bigger than this moment. You work so hard and dedicate yourselves each and every day to the important work of bringing trusted, credible news to our audience. Because of you, your loyalty, your dedication, NBC News is an organization we can – and should - all be proud of. We will get through this together.

Steve Burke asked me to share the following message.

“This has been a painful period for all concerned and we appreciate your patience while we gathered the available facts. By his actions, Brian has jeopardized the trust millions of Americans place in NBC News.  His actions are inexcusable and this suspension is severe and appropriate.  Brian’s life’s work is delivering the news. I know Brian loves his country, NBC News and his colleagues. He deserves a second chance and we are rooting for him.  Brian has shared his deep remorse with me and he is committed to winning back everyone’s trust.”

Deborah