CBS Mornings may be headed for a major shakeup as early as September, but its longtime host Gayle King is pushing back against a plan that could return former co-host Norah O'Donnell to the anchor desk.
King, 71, is "not happy" about the possibility of O'Donnell rejoining the broadcast and "does not want Norah to return to the show," an anonymous source told the New York Post. The tension comes as CBS News leadership weighs a broader restructuring of its struggling morning program, one that could add a third anchor and shift the format toward a looser, more conversational style.
The reported friction lands at a precarious moment for the network. CBS Mornings hit its lowest-rated week in history during the week of July 13, averaging just 1.59 million viewers. That marked the first time the show had ever dropped below the 1.6 million viewer threshold, a 13 percent decline from the same week one year earlier.
CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss is reportedly considering changes that would reshape the morning show into something closer to a "Morning Joe"-style broadcast, a more free-flowing, opinion-driven format built around personality and debate rather than traditional news anchoring. CBS News President Tom Cibrowski has said he wants the morning show to be "more loose," the Daily Mail reported.
Part of that plan involves adding a third person to the anchor desk alongside King and current co-host Nate Burleson. An announcement could come as early as next month, with changes phased in starting in September.
O'Donnell, 52, appears to be a leading candidate. Her profile within CBS News has been rising under Weiss's leadership. She was promoted from contributing correspondent to full 60 Minutes correspondent in July and has been appearing in new promos for CBS Mornings. She has also been substituting on the show.
But O'Donnell is not the only name in the mix. Eva Pilgrim, a former ABC anchor, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, and Kelly O'Grady, co-host of CBS Saturday Morning, are all in consideration for the third anchor slot, according to the media newsletter Status.
King and O'Donnell co-hosted CBS Mornings together from 2012 to 2019. An anonymous source described their relationship during that stretch as that of "frenemies", a dynamic that apparently has not improved with time.
One source drew a sharp distinction between the two anchors. King, the source said, is "an authentic person" who "loves the news." O'Donnell, by contrast, was described as "someone who loves the idea of being on the news."
That characterization, whether fair or not, points to the kind of internal culture clash that can hollow out a broadcast from the inside. Morning television runs on chemistry. Viewers can sense when the people behind the desk do not want to be sitting next to each other.
Despite the reported tension, sources told the Post that King has been pivotal to "the process of finding a new co-host" and that "nothing" would be happening without her blessing. That framing suggests King still wields significant influence over the show's direction, even if the final call belongs to Weiss and Cibrowski.
O'Donnell left CBS Mornings in 2019 to anchor the CBS Evening News. That tenure ended last January. Tony Dokoupil, who had previously anchored CBS Mornings himself, replaced her and started as the CBS Evening News anchor in January 2026.
Since stepping away from the evening broadcast, O'Donnell has stayed within the CBS orbit. Beyond her 60 Minutes role, she hosts a women's podcast called Healthful for CBS News. Her continued presence across the network's platforms has kept her visible, and, apparently, positioned her for a return to the morning desk whether King welcomes it or not.
The Daily Mail reached out to CBS News and representatives for King for comment. No response was reported.
The personnel drama makes for good television gossip, but the underlying problem is harder to fix with a casting change. CBS Mornings lost 13 percent of its audience in a single year and cratered to a viewership number the show had never before touched. A format overhaul and a new face at the desk might generate a short-term bump, but morning shows live and die on trust and habit, two things that take years to build and weeks to destroy.
Weiss and Cibrowski are betting that a looser, more conversational format can reverse the slide. That bet only works if the people on camera actually want to be there together. Forcing a reunion between two anchors whose relationship has been described as adversarial is a strange way to build the on-air warmth viewers are supposedly missing.
When a network responds to record-low ratings by rearranging chairs its own star host does not want rearranged, the audience is usually the last group anyone in the building is thinking about.
