Nate Burleson likely out at ‘CBS Mornings’ amid overhaul

A shakeup at CBS News is likely bringing an end to Nate Burleson’s four-year run on the network’s premier morning program.

According to a report by Alexandra Steigrad in the New York Post, CBS’s flagship morning show, CBS Mornings, “will likely be overhauled” amid Tony Dokoupil’s impending move to the network’s evening news program. Dokoupil has filled one of the host chairs on CBS’s morning program, formerly known as CBS This Morning, since 2019.

In 2021, when the show rebranded to CBS Mornings, Dokoupil and fellow co-host Gayle King were joined by CBS Sports NFL analyst Nate Burleson. The trio has stayed together ever since, though the show has always lagged behind the two stalwarts of morning television, ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC’s Today, in the ratings.

King, the longest tenured CBS morning host who began her run on the program in 2011, has a contract that expires in May, at which point network executives plan to remove her from the show. Steigrad reports that CBS executives would still like to find another role for King at the network.

With both Dokoupil and King heading for the exits, it seems like a natural time for CBS to completely retool its morning show, which apparently will not include Nate Burleson.

The former wide receiver has held down a weekday job on TV ever since joining the debut season of Good Morning Football on NFL Network in 2016. There, Burleson honed his craft for five years before taking on the decidedly different role of network morning show host in 2021. He’s widely seen as one of the most versatile talents in all of television, having recently expanded outside of studio work to call a games on Netflix’s Christmas Day NFL broadcast and during Nickelodeon’s Slimetime altcasts.

Burleson is one of the rare athletes that has successfully crossed over from sports media to general interest programming. Fox’s Michael Strahan has similarly held down a hosting role on Good Morning America while maintaining a prominent position on Fox NFL Sunday.

Per Steigrad, the CBS Mornings overhaul won’t happen in the “near term,” though one would expect the show to look quite different one way or another when King’s contract expires in less than six months. The shift will give Nate Burleson some flexibility to look at other weekday opportunities should he choose to do so.

Interestingly, it’s been an active day on the sports-personalities-on-morning-shows beat. Earlier on Tuesday, Fox NFL Sunday host Curt Menefee announced he would be departing Good Day New York where he has hosted the past two years.