Former Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd announced Friday he is leaving NBC News after 18 years at the network.
“There’s never a perfect time to leave a place that’s been a professional home for so long, but I’m pretty excited about a few new projects that are on the cusp of going from ‘pie in the sky’ to ‘near reality,’” Todd told NBC News staffers in a memo obtained by Variety. “So I’m grateful for the chance to get a jump start on my next chapter during this important moment.”
Todd is leaving the network to pursue other ventures, the outlet reported, and had been meeting with other news outlets in recent weeks as his contract was set to expire.
Todd said he will continue working on his Chuck Toddcast, which will be “coming with me” when he leaves the network. He told his colleagues to “stay tuned for an announcement about its new home soon,” adding he plans “to continue to share my reporting and unique perspective of covering politics with data and history as important baselines in understanding where we were, where we are and where we’re going.”
Todd joined NBC News in 2007 as a political director. He became the network’s chief White House correspondent the next year and began hosting Meet the Press in 2014.
He left his position moderating the Sunday show in 2023, but remained on at the network after Kristen Welker took over his spot.
“We’re grateful for Chuck’s many contributions to our political coverage during his nearly two-decade career at NBC News and for his deep commitment to Meet the Press and its enduring legacy,” NBC News said in a statement. “We wish him all the best in his next endeavors.”
Todd told staffers he plans to work on building out new media businesses.
“The media has a lot of work to do to win back the trust of viewers/listeners/readers and I’m convinced the best place to start is from the bottom up. At my core, I’m an entrepreneur — I spent my first 15 years professionally working for the company that started the political newsletter craze that dominates today. And this is a ripe moment,” he said.
“The only way to fix this information eco system is to stop whining about the various ways the social media companies are manipulating things and instead roll up our collective sleeves and start with local,” he added. “National media can’t win trust back without having a robust partner locally and trying to game algorithms is no way to inform and report. People are craving community and that’s something national media or the major social media companies can’t do as well as local media.”
Todd helped grow Meet the Press by launching a regular daytime hour on MSNBC called MTP Daily, along with a podcast and a film festival.
Todd becomes the latest legacy media personality to leave a major network for independent media opportunities, following in the footsteps of Jim Acosta, Megyn Kelly, and Don Lemon, though Lemon was forced out at CNN and Kelly was terminated by NBC. Acosta announced he would leave CNN this week after he was reportedly asked to accept a demotion from his morning show to a midnight time slot.