Meet Tom Llamas, Lester Holt’s replacement on NBC Nightly News: How much money will he make?

‘NBC Nightly News’ got a fresh face this week with its new anchor Tom Llamas after Lester Holt stepped down. Holt, 65, has been the face of NBC’s 6:30 pm news program for the past ten years, but has decided to expand his role at ‘Dateline’ where he’ll be able to focus on more in-depth reporting.

“Anchoring NBC Nightly News is a profound honor and one that carries tremendous responsibility,” Llamas said in a statement. “Lester Holt is a great man and one of the most trusted broadcasters of our time. Just like Lester, I promise to be devoted to our viewers and dedicated to the truth.”

Meet Tom Llamas

Llamas, 45, will be only the fourth anchor of ‘NBC Nightly News’ in its forty-year history. He’ll be following in the footsteps of Tom Brokaw, Brian Williams and of course Holt.

He has been married since 2006 to Jennifer, a producer at MSNBC, and the couple have three young children. Llamas is the son of Cuban refugees and has been in the news business since he was teenager. He covered crime scenes and interviewed local officials starting when he was 15 as a summer intern at a Telemundo station in Florida.

After graduating with a degree in broadcast journalism from Loyola University New Orleans he went to work for NBC-owned local stations in Florida and New York. After nine years he jumped over to ABC News in 2014.

He hosted the weekend edition of ‘ABC World News Tonight’ for seven years before returning to NBC. Since returning in 2021, he’s been a senior national correspondent and filled in on ‘NBC Nightly News’ and contributed to the ‘Today’ show.

He also began anchoring the primetime newscast ‘Top Story With Tom Llamas’, a streaming news program on NBC News NOW. Despite taking on his new responsibilities as anchor of ‘NBC Nightly News’ he will continue to host ‘Top Story’.

“There’s going to be the people who watch us on ‘Nightly News’, and there’s going to be people who watch us on ‘Top Story’,” he told The Washington Post. “And I wanted to make sure I was there for both of them.”

How much money will Tom Llamas make?

Entertainment Now reports that while Executive Vice President of Programming Janelle Rodriguez has said that Llamas has been “instrumental in growing NBC News NOW into the leading streaming news network, helping to introduce NBC News to a new generation of viewers,” part of his appeal to be anchor may have also been financial.

Citing a newsletter from The Ankler, the Entertainment Now says it’s expected that Llamas will get paid around $2.5 million as host of ‘NBC Nightly News’. That is only about a quarter of what the network was paying Holt.

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