Longtime CBS Anchor Stepping Down

Dana Tyler, WCBS/2's longest-serving anchor and a familiar face on New York TV news, will step down later this month, the station said in an internal memo, per Newsday. Having worked at Channel 2 from 1990 to the present, Tyler is the co-anchor of the weeknight newscast at 6 p.m. with Dick Brennan.

Johnny Green, the station's president and general manager, wrote in the memo, "This is not goodbye. Dana will be with us to fill-in anchor and contribute stories and interviews on air and streaming. Dick will return to being a reporter. They will both be on the air through the end of March when Maurice DuBois and Kristine Johnson will expand their time slot through 6:30 p.m." Currently, DuBois and Johnson anchor the 5 and 11 p.m. newscasts. 

Dana Tyler, the longest tenured anchor in WCBS/2 history and one of the most familiar figures on New York TV news, will step aside from her daily anchoring role later this month, the station said. https://t.co/gCmE3kXT7F

— Newsday (@Newsday) March 7, 2024

In July 1990, Tyler, 65, joined Channel 2 from her hometown of Columbus, Ohio, where she had worked as a reporter and anchor for WBNS/10 and where her family had a prominent status: In the history of the United States, Ralph Waldo Tyler, her great grandfather, was the first accredited Black correspondent during World War I, and later, he became assistant postmaster general, which was the highest-ranking Black official at the time in the federal government, according to Newsday. After arriving at WCBS/2, Tyler was named Reggie Harris' weekend co-anchor.

On Feb. 26, 1993, as anchor of the noon newscast, she was on the air for five hours after the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, which raised her profile. Since the transmitters for WNBC/4 and WABC/7 on the North Tower had been knocked out, while WCBS/2 was located atop the Empire State Building, Channel 2 was the only network-owned station on the air at the time.

In addition to serving as a CBS anchor for the major local newscasts at 5, 6, and 11 p.m., Tyler also survived a controversial mass firing on Oct. 2, 1996, when John Johnson, co-anchor Michele Marsh, anchor Tony Guida, sportscaster Bernie Smilovitz, reporters Harris, Magee Hickey, and Roseanne Colletti were terminated.

Tyler won Emmy awards for her coverage of the shooting outside City Hall of New York City Councilman James E. Davis on July 23, 2003, as well as for covering the blackout of that same year.

In addition, the newscaster had a romantic relationship with musician Phil Collins from 2006 to 2016. He ended the relationship to reunite with his ex-wife, Orianne Cevey.

During a 2022 interview with Newsday, Tyler credited her continued success to "luck, picking your battles, [and] lying low under the radar — the last two in combination — and control only that which you can control. 

"I also do feel that a big responsibility of mine is to be calm, or to try to. I can't tell someone [a viewer] that 'it's going to be OK,' but just try to remain calm and believe that we're going to get through this. That's the spirit of New York. I'm not one of those 'here's closure' types. You cannot do that here. The other thing is to just be myself. I'm not trying to be an anchor trying to do the news. I'm just Dana being — oh my goodness, I'm about to use one of those words [laughs] — being my 'authentic' self."