It's Jeff Glor, who at 42, is a year younger than ABC's whelp, David Muir.
Hi there, Jeffy. Glor-y be.
Why, he's another Jimmy Olsen. He's cu-u-u-u-u-ute. But, gosh, David Muir at ABC is a HUNK. Oh, Demographics! What's your target audience of moist women to do?
The Evening News, like Late Night, is dominated by demographics. Puppy Jimmy Fallon was the new trick and NBC kicked old dog Leno out. Leno of course, had eased Carson out, back when Leno had black hair. The number of white-haired or gray-haired anchors, daytime hosts, quiz show hosts, or late night hosts keeps dwindling and doddering to nearly none.
CBS was unhappy with Andrew Mason (61) who was filling in for the departed (not dead, but just sounding that way) gray-haired Scott Pelley (60). Pelley was sort of in the avuncular style of Walter Cronkite, once "the most trusted man in America." Old Scott's main flaw, for me, is that his delivery is ponderously slow. Let's say he moved from a Dan Rather 45 rpm to a more numbing 33 1/3rd. But let's not say that if you're under 40 and don't know what records are or turntable speeds.
So now, CBS has themselves a young pup who can compete with ABC's stud puppet. What about NBC, you say? They had smirky Brian Williams (58) earning ten million a year. Brian once won the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism. It turned out that he stretched the truth a few times too many, and was replaced by dull Lester Holt (58). How dull is Lester Holt? He's so boring nobody even cares if he's ethnic. His ancestry includes people "of color" (not colored people) from Africa by way of Jamaica, but he's not ETHNIC the way lovable Al Roker is, or more studly anchors who turn up pair with white women on local news broadcasts. He's just...LESTER. Les isn't Muir, and now Muir has competition.
Who will emerge as the big winner? Well, actually...none of the above. Once a money-making showcase, the "Evening News" as hosted by Cronkite, Huntley-Brinkley, Reasoner, even Rather, is now playing to a much lesser audience. The Internet is the culprit, along with the zillion cable channels that include, for news junkies, FOX, CNBC, C-Span, etc. etc. The hope is that moist females, still sitting down after watching Ellen and quiz shows and judge shows, will stay glued to GLOR or MUIR, just to watch the anchor, not necessarily to care about numb foreign news, the latest climate-change catastrophe, or something Trump said.
As for Lester Holt, NBC probably hopes "serious" viewers will prefer getting their news from a guy with no sex appeal at all. But he IS 58 already. While George Foreman once declared "50 is not a death sentence," it's TERMINAL in certain categories of show biz, and the evening news IS show biz. The news at NBC is...right now they are probably looking for somebody NEW.
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