‘I will be expanding my footprint on the broadcast and crafting ‘Dateline ‘hours on subjects I care deeply about,’ the anchor added, in a memo since re-shared by the company.

‘I am thrilled to be able to work more closely with my enormously talented friends at Dateline as the broadcast continues to grow and attract new viewers.’

Dateline is currently the 14th most popular show on NBC and is viewed by more than 2.3million people, but like most legacy media broadcasts as of late, is down drastically in terms of viewership when compared with years prior.

Just two years ago, the magazine-style program that’s regularly compared to CBS’s 60 Minutes or the PBS NewsHour had an average audience of more than 4million.

NBC Nightly News – currently behind evening news frontrunner ABC World News Tonight – is averaging 6.742 million total viewers, down one percent from this time last year.

The statistic, moreover, was recorded following some gains from the long-running program – which over the summer was subject to some double digit dips in total audience and in the hallowed 25-to-54-year-old demographic.

Back in July, the show was down 17 percent in total audience from the quarter before and 27 percent in the demographic most valued by advertisers, but has since managed to stop the bleeding.

However, a change in format already spawned a ratings crisis over at rival CBS – and Holt, for many viewers at home, has become a fixture.

Asked about Nightly News’ future during an interview with Esquire in late 2023, the anchor conceded: ‘Yes, audiences are migrating. [But] how people consume us, that’s going to continue to change.

‘I have no idea how in seventy-five years,’ he added, after earning recognition stints on Today and MSNBC before that.

‘But Nightly News will exist.’

Meanwhile, still sitting in the wings is Senior National Correspondent Tom Llamas, whom for years now has been speculated to be Holt’s likely successor.

In 2021, insiders told Page Six how Llamas was ‘clearly being groomed for a big role’, and sources told the Ankler in November how higher-ups at the network would be happy to replace Holt with Llamas due to the latter’s comparatively modest salary of $2.5million.

It is unclear how much Holt was paid for Nightly News.

Holt’s contract expires this year, and Llamas has experience as an Evening News anchor thanks to time as a weekend host for ABC’s still-successful World News Tonight.

Holt scored the job thanks experience garnered under a similar role supplementing Williams, who himself was a figure once synonymous with American news.

A decade later, it seems a changing of the guard is in store, at a time where networks like CBS, MSNBC, and CNN are implementing change to address shifting consumer habits – and, perhaps, a new presidency.

‘Everything about our country has changed, except the language used to describe it,’ he wrote, after making a rare appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers after Trump’s win in November.

‘The problem, of course, is that this language is lazy, numbing and normalizing in a time of urgency and exigency,’ he went on, at this point offering his piece’s de facto mission statement.

‘It’s actually insulting, and a gross disservice to those watching and listening – because it doesn’t match what they just saw or heard for themselves.’

‘It was crushing to watch so many working journalists attempt to generate the words to accurately describe a visibly struggling and diminished president, seemingly unable to complete a sentence or a thought in his disastrous and final debate.’

Not mentioning any names, the man who for years worked with the likes of Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough, and Mika Brzezinski went on to offer one last parting shot at those who refused to face the truth.

‘Say it with me: It is perhaps the ultimate irony that the electoral collapse of the Democratic Party in 2024 was triggered in large part by the man who ran to save the country and democracy – the same man who then tried to stay too long at the fair.

‘There, I said it,’ he added as sort of signoff. ‘Now someone please say it into a microphone. You can do it.’

For his final sign-off, the figure once synonymous with American airwaves told colleagues that ‘following much reflection,’ he was leaving the company.

‘This is the end of a chapter and the beginning of another,’ Williams upon being succeeded by Holt, after joining NBC News in 1993.

‘There are many things I want to do, and I’ll pop up again somewhere,’ he said, before fading into relative obscurity.

A few years before, in 2015, a scandal saw him thrust from the seat he assumed from the legendary Tom Brokaw in 2004, after he was caught lying about a wartime story.

Developing story, check back for updates.