NBC News Cancels 'Stay Tuned' Streaming Show in Staff Realignment

NBC News has cancelled "Stay Tuned," ending its one hour of primetime programming on the NBC News Now streaming service, according to a person familiar with the matter. Wednesday's stream was the show's last. A handful of positions across the NBCUniversal news unit will be eliminated in the same realignment.

Gadi Schwartz, the NBC News correspondent who anchored the West Coast-based show that streamed at 8 p.m. ET, will stay with the news division, the same person said. Producers who worked on the program can apply for nearly 50 open positions at NBC News. Many of those roles sit with "Dateline" or the news specials department, and there is hope that many of those affected will take them.

The positions being cut represent less than 1% of NBC News' overall staff, the person said. NBC News confirmed that Wednesday's "Stay Tuned" stream was the final one but declined to make executives available for comment.

What fills the empty hour?

NBC News Now is expected to fill its primetime schedule with re-airs of previous streaming programming. The service already repeats Tom Llamas' streaming show, "Top Story," in evening hours, so the model isn't new to the outlet.

That raises the practical question: does this signal a retreat from free, ad-supported streaming (the FAST model, where viewers watch at no cost and revenue comes from ads)? The answer, according to the person familiar with the matter, is no. The end of "Stay Tuned" isn't seen as a reduction in commitment to that strategy.

The numbers back that up. Viewing on NBC News Now tripled between 2020 and 2025, per the same account. The outlet's anchor roster includes Savannah Sellers, Joe Fryer, Christine Romans and Hallie Jackson.

A sector-wide squeeze

NBC News isn't the only TV-news division rethinking staffing during a difficult stretch for media companies. Skydance — the owner of CNN and CBS News — has offered buyouts to staff across the company as part of a push for $6 billion in cost cuts, after taking on heavy debt to combine Warner Bros. Discovery with Paramount.

CBS News and CNN have each had additional rounds of layoffs in recent months.

The pattern is straightforward. Legacy news operations are consolidating streaming and linear output while trimming payrolls to service debt and protect margins. For NBC News Now, that means repeating existing programming instead of commissioning a live West Coast hour.

What it changes for viewers is modest: one fewer live primetime option, with familiar shows like "Top Story" cycling back in its place. What it changes for staff is sharper — a sub-1% cut in headcount, offset by roughly 50 openings that displaced "Stay Tuned" producers are being encouraged to pursue.

If viewing on the free service keeps growing, expect NBC News to keep consolidating rather than expanding its live streaming slate.