Holt is a talented news reader ...he does not need to cry racism if he is removed
No, but he will.
He probably wouldn’t cry racism. The Professionally Aggrieved / Looking For Reasons To Be Offended would do it for him. He can take advantage of their outrage while seeming to be above the fray.
Sickening, isn’t it?
I actually (mostly) like Lester Holt. It never occurred to me that he was selected or retained due to racial biases on the part of NBC. Dumb me, right?
Holt has a proven inability to hold an audience, dating from his days as lead anchor at WBBM-TV in Chicago. To be fair, Channel 2 was long past its glory day when Holt moved into the chair, and it was still a train wreck when he left. But for some reason, he doesn’t connect as well with viewers as other news readers—and it has nothing to do with his race.
NBC made the same mistake with Williams that CBS did with Dan Rather. They put all their money on one horse, and never made a serious effort to groom a successor. When Brian Williams imploded (like “Fake but Accurate” Dan), the network was left scrambling. They really can’t bring Williams back; Holt isn’t the long-term answer and neither is Matt Lauer or Savannah Guthrie.
Not that it really matters; the networks are making their money off morning infotainment shows, not the evening news. At some point, a large station group will decide they no longer want to give up 30 minutes of early evening airtime for a network newscast, and they will pull the plug. Smaller stations will follow and that will be the end of the evening news.
And that’s all he does READ
I remember the first time I saw this guy. Whoa! What a serious badass face for someone obviously READING He couldn’t even fake it. And quite frankly, he’s still as intense and plastic as from the get-go. When the Williams Fraud started, I took nbc off the taping list, and sure didn’t add it when Holt took over.