Chuck Todd signed off his closing broadcast of Meet the Press on Sunday, capping off a stint that started in 2014.
Todd, 51, uttered the present’s catchphrase “If it’s Sunday…it’s Meet the Press” for a closing time as he handed off the reins of America’s longest-running TV program to Kristen Welker, his longtime NBC colleague and successor.
He informed viewers in his sign-off that he could be staying at NBC and that he was happy with his work because the present’s moderator. Meet the Press gained an Emmy beneath his management simply final 12 months, and has been the dominant Sunday political information present in Washington for many years.
“One factor all of us lament recently is the lack of information and nuance in our politics and citizenship. That is a vacuum I hope to proceed to fill whether or not in our continued information protection right here at NBC by way of different venues like docu-series, docu-dramas, centered on bridging our divides, piercing these political bubbles,” stated Todd on Sunday. “And I’ll proceed, in fact, to be an enormous a part of NBC’s political protection as a result of, as Tom Brokaw stated to me, ‘Look, some networks do some issues properly, however no person does politics like NBC.’”
Todd beforehand introduced that he could be remaining with the community as its chief political analyst whereas additionally shifting on to producing longer initiatives with a political bent, geared toward therapeutic divisions in American life.
Having a popularity as one of many few NBC programmes that also usually attracts Republican visitors, Todd gained each reward and criticism for his dealing with of America’s widening political divides, particularly after the 2020 election. In 2019, he drew criticism after admitting that he had been “naive” in regards to the more and more dishonest nature of the pro-Trump proper and the officers who served within the Trump administration. The Washington political media sphere basically, which Meet the Press usually emblemises, has confronted rising criticism in recent times for a sort of “politics as sports activities”-style of protection that has been accused of ignoring the real-life stakes behind the problems being mentioned.
Todd answered a few of these criticisms in 2021 when he defined the logic behind refusing to ban individuals liable for spreading lies in regards to the 2020 election from his present, one thing that others akin to CNN’s Jake Tapper have urged.
“You don’t know when any individual you assume deserves to be banned is all of a sudden any individual that you simply’ve acquired to take care of,” he stated on a podcast that 12 months.
His closing broadcast of Meet the Press was attended by a who’s who checklist of NBC reporters, pundits and hosts on Sunday, the place visitors loved a toast led by NBCUniversal Information Group Chairman Cesar Conde on the studio following his hand-off to Welker.
Mr Conde informed Todd: “I recall you saying that your mission at Meet the Press was to go away it higher than the way you discovered it. And on behalf of all of us right here in the present day, on behalf of all of us at NBCUniversal I wish to say a heartfelt thanks as a result of you may have performed that.”