Carson Daly Adds 'Saturday Today,' Putting Him on NBC Six Days a Week

He takes over the chair Peter Alexander left, sitting beside Laura Jarrett from Nov. 7 and keeping his weekday 'Today' job and 'The Voice.'

Carson Daly says his kids had one question when he picked up a Saturday morning job: would he still make pancakes?

NBC is moving Daly into the co-anchor chair on Saturday Today next to Laura Jarrett, starting Nov. 7, Variety reported Thursday. He's keeping his weekday Today seat too, which means six days a week for NBC News. Deadline also reported the move and noted that he'll keep hosting and executive producing The Voice.

So the pancakes are still happening. "I told them yes, but I'll be making them for Laura, Joe and Angie instead," Daly said in a statement Variety published. That's Jarrett, feature anchor Joe Fryer and meteorologist Angie Lassman, who both stay with the show.

The seat has had a very different kind of occupant until now. Peter Alexander held it before he left NBC for MS NOW earlier this year, according to Deadline. Before Jarrett arrived, Variety reported, Alexander's partner was Kristen Welker, who now moderates Meet the Press, and for a stretch the two hosted the Saturday show from Washington.

Daly didn't come up through that world. Variety points out that he isn't known as a hard-news journalist. His years as a host and interviewer came in radio and at MTV, where he co-created and hosted Total Request Live, Deadline noted. NBC News is betting that he and Jarrett, a legal specialist, will balance each other out, Variety reported.

He also started at Today pretty far from the anchor desk. His first job there, back in 2013, was running the Orange Room, a corner of the show built around social media, according to Deadline. In a statement, Libby Leist, NBC News' executive vice president of Today and lifestyle, called him a core part of the show's family for those 13 years and said viewers now get him one more day a week.

The timing matters on the weekend dial. ABC recently reshuffled the weekend Good Morning America teams, and Rachel Scott, ABC News' senior political correspondent, began co-anchoring Saturdays with Whit Johnson on Sept. 12, according to Variety. Variety reads NBC's move as a push to give Saturday Today an identity of its own, the way Willie Geist's Sunday Today has its long interviews.

That makes this Saturday a real contrast. ABC gave its Saturday chair to a political correspondent. NBC gave its chair to the guy who co-created TRL.

Source: Deadline, retrieved November 5, 2026. Other sources: Variety.