Jeff Glor’s start to his gig as CBS Evening News anchor has been a torrid one. He began in the role Dec. 4, and was almost immediately reporting from Los Angeles, as wildfires blazed through the city. A week later, he was in Paris, sitting down with the French president, Emmanuel Macron. “We sort of hit the ground running,” Glor said.
As Glor’s first two weeks suggested, it’s likely he’ll be more out and about in the field than a typical evening news anchor, CBS News president David Rhodes said. “That’s definitely something he’s comfortable doing,” he said, “and something we’re comfortable having him do.”
Rhodes said Glor’s hunger to get boots on the ground in a newsy market was a factor in him getting the promotion. “He’s got a tremendous amount of energy and enthusiasm for that,” said Rhodes.
Talking to those affected by the events, Glor said, gives any news gatherer a better understanding of the story they are reporting on. “You learn about what’s happening when you’re on the ground and when you see what’s happening,” he said. “This is a broadcast that’s best powered ultimately by our reporters and producers who are in the field, who understand what’s happening.”
Glor, who is 42, came on board at CBS News in 2007 as a correspondent. He’s had a varied run, anchoring at streaming platform CBSN, being a correspondent for CBS This Morning and 60 Minutes Sports, and anchoring the Saturday CBS Evening News from 2009-2010 and Sundays from 2012-2016. He also anchored The Early Show, which predated CBS This Morning, in 2011.
Before Glor started in the Evening News chair this month, Rhodes noted the anchor’s versatility, saying he was adept at both the everyday reporting and “the most significant events of our time.”
Glor succeeds Scott Pelley, who had taken over for Katie Couric in 2011. Pelley returned to a full-time role at 60 Minutes, where he worked before taking on the anchor job at CBS Evening News. Even while he was the nightly anchor, Pelley remained a correspondent at 60 Minutes.
Steve Capus continues to executive produce CBS Evening News, as he did for Pelley.
A Team Effort
Glor has gamely relied on his correspondents in his first couple weeks on the job, and will continue to do so. That includes Elizabeth Palmer and chief White House correspondent Major Garrett. “My goal is to focuson the work of our correspondents, their reporting and writing,” Glor said.
The evening broadcast will change “incrementally,” he said. Following Democrat Doug Jones’s win over Republican Roy Moore for a U.S. Senate seat in Alabama last week, he pointed out, Evening News featured a roundtable discussion that had chief Washington correspondent John Dickerson, White House correspondent Margaret Brennan and chief congressional correspondent Nancy Cordes offering their takes on the Democrats’ unlikely win.
Asked if the newscast would look much different six months down the road, he said, “I wouldn’t say very different, but different.”
During Glor’s launch week, CBS Evening News averaged 7.1 million viewers, which was 8% better than the program’s season-to-date average. It’ll be some time, though, before CBS is threatening its rivals. That same week of Dec. 4-8, ABC’s World News Tonight, anchored by David Muir, averaged 9.5 million viewers, and NBC Nightly News, anchored by Lester Holt, averaged 8.9 million. Glor has his work cut out for him.
Bullish on the Bills
Glor is from Tonawanda, N.Y., just north of Buffalo, and Bills memorabilia decorates his office. (He’s plotted out the likely results for the Bills’ remaining games, and the team’s route, however fraught, to the playoffs.) Before coming on board at CBS News, he was an anchor at WHDH Boston. Before that, he anchored at WSTM Syracuse. Glor graduated from Syracuse in 1997.
The father of two, he’s a passionate reader, consuming both fiction and non-fiction on his flights around the world, raving about recently deceased author William Gass. Glor often seeks books that offer perspective on a locale he’s headed to. “I like finding books that provide deeper dives into stories we’re about to go to,” he said.
Glor seemed to have a natural rapport with French president Macron, who pushed President Donald Trump to rethink his stance on climate change. “I think the mistake that you’re making — I mean, that your president decided to make — is exactly the mistake we made in France and in Europe, I mean, the first phase of globalization,” Macron said in the interview. “Which was to resist to the change in order to protect the old jobs. What we have to protect is people, not jobs.”
Glor said Macron strikes “an interesting balance” with Trump. “They maintain this friendly relationship,” he said, “but [Macron] also pushes him on issues he believes are important.”
There are no trips planned for Glor in the near term, but it being the news, that can change in a hurry.
“It’s been active,” said Glor about his first couple of weeks. “But I suppose that’s what I expected.”
