Rumor Has It Gayle King May Be Leaving Amidst CBS Bleeding Hosts. What The Eye Network Is Saying Is Really Going On

It’s been a wild few months over at CBS. The company has changed ownership following Paramount's merger with David Ellison’s Skydance, and there are major shifts across everything from the late-night TV scene to CBS News. The latest casualty of the changes is reported to be Gayle King, who’s been part of CBS’s morning news programs for more than a decade. However, now the Eye Network has responded.

A Variety report, citing four people with knowledge of the situation, says King is expected to depart the show next year. If she does leave, it’s possible she may remain at CBS in an off-camera role, though that’s unclear. The network, for its part, has already responded to the claim, saying there have been no conversations with King about her future. The statement reads…

Technically speaking, the CBS statement doesn’t contradict the Variety report. If there are plans at CBS to have King move away from her current role, that doesn’t mean those plans have been discussed with her yet, and if the plan is to simply let King’s contract run out, then she would leave next year, as is being suggested.

And there’s certainly reason to believe changes are coming at the top of CBS's weekday morning news. Exactly that is already happening on the weekends, as the anchors and executive producer of CBS Saturday Morning are leaving amid a reported major revamp of the show.

It should be said that there have been questions about King's future at CBS for several months, so it's possible that any changes predate the current shake-up. Of course, there have been rumors of Gayle King leaving CBS for years, and they have yet to materialize.

So, all of this should be taken with a grain of salt until King's future at CBS is directly clarified by her and the network.

Of course, all of this also follows the news that The Late Show with Stephen Colbert will be ending next year, in May 2026, the same month Gayle King’s contract is reported to be ending. While that decision was made before the Paramount merger, it happened following jokes from Colbert about Paramount settling a lawsuit with Donald Trump in order to help the merger succeed. However, it's been said that the decision to end his show was a financial one.

To a certain extent, these sorts of changes are to be expected. CBS recently brought in Bari Weiss as the new Editor-in-Chief of CBS News, and under a new boss, you expect change. That said, seeing Gayle King leaving would be a major shift and the sort that audiences who have woken up with her for years may not want to see.

Whether Gayle King leaves CBS News in the next few months or not, we likely haven’t seen the end of major changes coming to the network’s news division.