Brian Williams will host/moderate this Sunday’s edition of “Meet the Press” on NBC. However, NBC execs are quick to say that this isn’t a permanent replacement for Tim Russert who died suddenly of a heart attack last week. See a photo, video and biography below.
Reuters reports that
NBC News president Steve Capus said Thursday that the news division was still in mourning, and it was likely that NBC News talent would moderate “Meet the Press” on a revolving basis.
“I just don’t think there’s any way we would ask anyone to go into any of the roles on a permanent basis. It would be too much, too soon,” Capus said. “The only way I can contemplate it is, thinking for people who could step up temporarily.”
Sunday’s “Meet the Press” guests will be Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and Democratic Sen. Joe Biden, both of whom had been scheduled to appear on the show last week.
Brian Williams was born on May 5, 1959. He is the seventh anchor and managing editor for the NBC Nightly News, succeeding Tom Brokaw in December 2004. He lives in New Canaan, Connecticut with his wife, Jane Stoddard Willliams, and their two children.
Although he’s a news anchor, he doesn’t limit himself to news television. He has appeared on shows such as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Late Night with Conan O’Brien and Saturday Night Live.
Brian Williams is the son of a business executive, and he was raised in a middle class Irish Catholic home. He was born in Elmira, New York and later moved to Middletown, New Jersey. During high school he served as a volunteer firefighter. Later he attended Brookdale Community College and then transferred to George Washington University and then to the Catholic University of America. However, he didn’t graduate. Instead, he took an internship with President Jimmy Carter’s administration. He considers the fact that he left college as one of his great regrets in life. In 2008 he received an honorary Doctor of Journalism degree from Ohio State University.
He began his career in broadcasting at a Kansas TV station in 1981. The following year he moved back to Washington, D.C. and worked as a “general assignment correspondent” at a television station there. In 1985 he replaced Maury Povich as the host of a locally produced talk show. In 1985 he was hired by CBS and worked as a New Jersey correspondent for its Philadelphia affiliate, WCAU-TV. In 1987 he was promoted to WCBS-TV in New York where it didn’t take long for him to start anchoring the noon news. He won his first Emmy for reporting about the October 1987 stock market collapse. In 1993 Brian Williams began work as the weekend anchor for the NBC national news, and in 1994 he became NBC’s chief White House correspondent. Then in 1996 he took over as lead anchor for The News with Brian Williams on MSNBC and CNBC in 1996.
