CBS News Political Director John Dickerson will succeed the retiring Bob Schieffer as host of CBS News’s Sunday Beltway show, Face the Nation, when Schieffer steps down “this summer,” Schieffer announced on this morning’s show.
Schieffer, 78, noted there’s been much speculation as to who would take his place on the program since last Wednesday, when he announced his retirement, at the annual Schieffer Symposium at Texas Christian University, his alma mater.
“I’m happy to say the answer is: my friend, the CBS News political director John Dickerson, who’s been on this program 83 times,” Shieffer said on today’s broadcast.
“He sure has the right bloodlines – his mother, Nancy Dickerson was the first female correspondent in the CBS News Washington bureau. She was a member of the Washington press corp as an NBC correspondent when I came to Washington in 1969… [T]his just underlies what I’ve been saying for years – I find myself these days working with the children of my friends,” said Schieffer, who has been with CBS News for 46 years, this year marking his 24th anchoring CBS’ Sunday Beltway show.
Schieffer’s retirement throws into question the pecking order in the Sunday Beltway ratings wars; Face finished out 2014 as the highest-rated show of the genre for a third consecutive year.
