Norah nearer to anchor chair
CBS News is seriously considering replacing Jeff Glor with Norah O’Donnell on “CBS Evening News,” Page Six has learned — so much so that the network is considering moving the broadcast from New York to Washington, DC, to accommodate O’Donnell. Industry insiders tell us that “CBS This Morning” co-anchor O’Donnell, who has been campaigning for the prize gig since before Glor took over, would prefer to be based in the capital city because her husband has a string of restaurants in the city, so her family currently splits their time between New York and DC. Sources say O’Donnell has been actively lobbying executives to move her to DC for some time and that, in the past couple of weeks, CBS has begun to make very tentative plans to set up an operation there for her, should she get the job. O’Donnell worked for more than a decade as a DC and White House correspondent for NBC and its sister network MSNBC. Glor succeeded Scott Pelley in the storied anchor chair in December 2017, but he has struggled with ratings and faced newsroom unrest. As Page Six has reported, outgoing CBS News president David Rhodes had weighed replacing Glor (although the network denied it at the time) when the ratings slide began to alarm execs. Meanwhile, incoming boss Susan Zirinsky — whose tenure was announced in January and who will replace Rhodes on March 1 — has been supportive of Glor, whom she championed for the “Evening News” job in the first place. But Zirinsky hasn’t promised Glor that he’ll keep the job once she takes the reins. Multiple sources told us that O’Donnell has not yet been offered the gig. Asked about plans to give O’Donnell the job and to move her to DC, a CBS News executive told us that it’s premature to speculate about what Zirinsky may do “across the [news] division,” and said, “As to be expected with any new president, all options would be on the table.” Reps for O’Donnell and Glor declined to comment.