Jon Tower Named Executive Producer of CBS Mornings

CBS News has named Jon Tower executive producer of CBS Mornings, the network's morning news programme. The news was announced in a memo from Tom Cibrowski, who is president of the Skydance news unit, sent on Friday (Variety).

The executive producer is the person who runs a show day to day. That includes its stories, its guests and the team that puts it on air each morning. Tower had been filling the job on an interim basis, meaning on a temporary footing, since March. That was when Shawna Thomas, the programme's top producer, left the show.

Tower joined CBS News in 2014. Before that, he worked on the original production team that launched Morning Joe, the political talk show. He has worked on the morning programme before, too. In 2020, when executive producer Diana Miller stepped away, he helped manage the show while CBS looked for a successor. Claudia Milne worked alongside him at that time.

He is not working alone at the top of CBS News. Norah O'Donnell returned to CBS Mornings as a host in September, according to CBS News. Bari Weiss is editor in chief of CBS News. A report from early October said Tower oversees CBS Mornings, while Kim Harvey oversees the CBS Evening News.

For the people who make the show, the change settles a question that had been open since the spring. The morning crew now has a named executive producer to answer to, rather than an interim one.

Here is what to watch next. The announcement does not, based on the reporting so far, change the show's air time or its line-up of hosts. Any further staffing moves would normally show up in trade reports and on the network's own pages.