One wokester is staying at CBS while another is headed for the exits.
Despite months of speculation about her future given the absurd salary (reportedly $15 million a year) and the (advertised) pivot toward reality under editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, longtime CBS Mornings co-host, Oprah gal pal, and former Democrat donor Gayle King announced Wednesday she was returning to the network and weekday morning newscast, even saying “[r]umors of my demise were inaccurate and greatly exaggerated.”
Longtime showrunner and executive producer Shawna Thomas, however, is headed toward the exits after five years with Variety saying the show will face “another overhaul...that may have it embrace some of the frillier trappings of the daypart that it has previously avoided” such as, say, on-set cooking segments.
For King, her renewal first landed at The Wall Street Journal and, in addition to her own spin on the famous Mark Twain quote, she said “CBS News is my longtime home, and I am committed to our mission.”
“I’m excited about continuing at ‘CBS Mornings.’ As always, I’m open to new adventures here and ready to go. It took a minute, but we got there. And now that we are here, I am all in,” she said, which some keen eyes could take to mean she might take on new projects or even leave the show but remain at the network.
Terms weren’t disclosed, but Puck’s Dylan Byers said he was “told Gayle agreed to far less than the $15 million per year she’d been making, befitting the industry’s contraction.”
Weiss was effusive in her praise for King, remarking “there is only one Gayle King” and that “[w]e’re thrilled to have her on in the morning—and equally excited to work with her on new, enterprising projects that bring her talents to new audiences.”
Based on a separate statement from CBS News President Tom Cibrowski, King will still be joined by Nate Burleson at the main table, who made the switch from NFL player to sportscaster and now newscaster in 2021. Along with holding down co-hosting duties at CBS Mornings, Burleson is also behind the desk at CBS’s The NFL Today and will be a co-anchor of the CBS-Turner coverage of March Madness.
Between the New York Post, Puck, Status, Variety, and other media pages, a third, co-host remains to-be-determined as CBS suits experiment with both internal and external candidates. On the latter, Status’s Oliver Darcy has said Weiss has shown interest in former ESPN host-turned-conservative influencer Sage Steele and former Good Morning America newsreader Josh Elliott.
Burleson and King were both off Thursday, but featured co-host Vladimir Duthiers dedicated part of his “What to Watch” block to sharing the news with any viewers who hadn’t heard already. Duthiers was joined by CBS Saturday Morning co-hosts Adriana Diaz and Kelly O’Grady and all three were effusive in King’s generous, kind-hearted support and emphasis she’s always been a true team player:
Here was @VladDuthiersCBS telling 'CBS Mornings' viewers on Thursday (who might not have heard) that @GayleKing will be sticking around at CBS and on the morning show.@AdrianaDiaz and @TheKellyOGrady were there filling in for Gayle and @NateBurleson, sharing King has always… pic.twitter.com/0a8rABFcU2
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) March 5, 2026
As for Thomas, she reportedly said in a memo to colleagues that she had “been thinking about this for a while and, frankly, I’m tired y’all.”
Variety’s Brian Steinberg has more details about Thomas, a liberal producer with NBC and then an on-air personality at Vice (where she won a Peabody for her Charlottesville coverage) (click “expand”)::
“For five years, I’ve tried to make this show something you all want to watch. Want to be a part of. Want to learn from,” Thomas said in a note to staffers Thursday. She added: “I’ve had the privilege of helping to make 10 (now 12!) hours of television each week that goes out free to people everywhere. I’ve taken that responsibility of trying to inform, educate, entertain and make people care about the world around them very seriously and I know the people here do, too.”
Thomas is “a passionate journalist, especially when it comes to reporting and understanding our country’s very dynamic political arena. We will certainly miss her reasoned voice at our morning meeting,” Cibrowski said. Jon Tower will assume executive-producer duties on an interim basis after Thomas departs. CBS News executives remain impressed with Thomas’ abilities, according to a person familiar with the matter, and are eager to find a way to continue working with her in some fashion, potentially as a contributor.
(....)
If anyone knows what works in morning TV, it’s Cibrowski. Though he joined CBS News after a stint running ABC’s San Francisco station KGO, he also logged time as a senior executive at ABC News, where he was among those who helped boost “Good Morning America” over NBC’s “Today” for the first time in years. Cibrowski was executive producer of the show when it flipped the morning-TV hierarchy.
The New York Post’s Alexandra Steigrad posted on X Thursday morning that she predicted this in August, writing the show’s ratings were struggling in part because King and Thomas “set a programming ‘agenda’ that has alienated traditional morning show viewers, one of the sources close to the situation told The Post” with another (or perhaps the same, she wouldn’t say) arguing “the morning show audience wants optimism and cheer and joy,” not “woke.”
