CBS News anchor Harry Smith is leaving the network after 25
years.
Smith is reportedly heading to NBC News, where he will join Brian
Williams at NBC's new primetime news show. The move comes after CBS shuffled The Early Show anchor team last year, leaving Smith to cover various segments on CBS Evening News.
Below is the memo sent to staff from CBS News President
David Rhodes:
Harry Smith has
been a fixture here at CBS News for a generation-he joined us in Dallas in
1986-but today he's decided to move on.
Until late last
year Harry anchored the Early Show, where for years he took us through breaking
news events from the war in Iraq to the tsunami in Sri Lanka to Columbine and
Oklahoma City. Harry conducted news-making interviews with the biggest
names in politics and entertainment. During the course of his career
here, Harry sat down with six presidents, from Barack Obama back to Richard
Nixon.
In my own recent
time at CBS News I enjoyed working with Harry as he reported from Egypt, Libya,
Malta, and Japan. Frankly we may have enjoyed all those assignments more
than he did-he's seen a lot of airport departure lounges over his career and
especially in the last four months.
If you saw Harry's
piece closing the CBS Evening News the first Monday after the Japanese tsunami,
you know what great work he is capable of.
Jeff Fager and I
want to thank Harry for his extraordinary contribution to CBS over 25
years. If you see Harry around the newsroom in New York today, or
otherwise are able to reach out, please join us in wishing him well.
TV Newser first reported this story.
