Lester Holt is embarking on the sixth edition of NBC Nightly News’ Across America series, which takes the anchor (and Nightly News correspondents) into different cities across the country to report on their communities. The past couple series have focused on how the pandemic has affected those communities. The series kicks off tonight in Austin.
“Cities have been changing in this pandemic world,” Holt recently told The Austin Statesman. “People have been migrating in different ways. We’ve always been keeping a sharp eye on that in our in our newscast. But every time that conversation comes up, it turns to Austin.”
Holt will report on the real estate market and the increase in major tech companies moving to Austin. Local taco favorite Veracruz All Natural, owned by Maritza and Reyna Vazquez, will be featured in a segment.
The Across America series will continue for the rest of the week by traveling to St. Louis, Washington, D.C., Nashville and Phoenix.
Holt discussed his imminent trip to Nashville in an interview with The Tennessean. NBC Nightly News plans to put Grand Ole Opry in the spotlight during Thursday’s broadcast – specifically, Saturday’s historic 5,000th performance of the legendary radio show. The newscast is also sitting down with Brad Paisley and Kimberly Williams-Paisley to talk about The Store, a nonprofit enabling food-insecure Tennesseans to shop for groceries, and Holt will also highlight a story on “how Nashville is managing the fallout that kids and schools have been facing from the pandemic… that’s a story we’re going to tell through eyes of Nashville, but of course, the whole country has struggled with this particular issue during the pandemic.”
Holt also discussed Across America series with WWD: “This is a very diverse country. And that’s what I always find doing these things. And it’s not just political, the red states and blue states. It’s what people value and how they approach things. On these national newscasts we sit behind a set in New York most nights. We take the show on the road when there’s a big story, a big calamity. Why not go when everything’s OK?”
But the evening news still travels when there’s a big story, and that’s happening this week in Scotland, site of the U.N. Climate Change conference.
ABC World News Tonight anchor David Muir is anchoring his network’s evening newscast from Glasgow. This, not long after he reported from Southern Madagascar on how climate change is drastically affecting the lives of people in the country.
Muir’s reporting is part of ABC News’ month-long series “Climate Crisis: Saving Tomorrow”, which launched today. The series features climate change coverage spanning seven continents.
The first clip aired Monday on GMA, and more from the report will air tonight on World News Tonight and a special edition of Nightline.
