Ted Koppel to Anchor Last 'Nightline' on Nov. 22

LOS ANGELES - Broadcast journalist Ted Koppel, the face of late-night newscast "Nightline" for a quarter century, will anchor the show for the last time on Nov. 22, but ABC News has not decided who will replace him, the network said Thursday.

Koppel, 65, becomes the latest in a string of veteran network news anchors to sign off in recent months, following Tom Brokaw of NBC, Dan Rather of CBS and Koppel's ABC News colleague, the late Peter Jennings.

Koppel, who has hosted "Nightline" since its official 1980 debut in the midst of the U.S.-Iranian hostage crisis, plans to continue working on news projects with the show's outgoing executive producer, Tom Bettag, after their departure.

The network said in March that Koppel would step down from the program when his contract expired in December, but ABC News spokeswoman Emily Lenzner said Koppel decided he wanted to leave before Thanksgiving.

No decisions have been made about the nature of Koppel's final Nov. 22 broadcast or who will succeed him when the weeknight series resumes without him on Nov. 28, she said.

Recent media reports about the program's future have suggested the broadcast, which originates in Washington, would be shared by multiple anchors based in different studios.

"Nightline," which helped usher in the nation's demand for round-the-clock news, evolved from a series of late-night news specials devoted to coverage of the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in November 1979.

The specials, titled "The Iran Crisis: America Held Hostage," were first anchored by Frank Reynolds, then by Koppel, who stayed on to become host of "Nightline" when it debuted as a regular ABC program on March 24, 1980.

News of Koppel's departure date comes as "Nightline" is enjoying an upswing in the ratings, due in large part to its coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its devastating aftermath.

For the week of Aug. 29, the series drew a bigger audience than both NBC's "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" or the CBS "Late Show with David Letterman" for the first time since the start of the Iraq war in 2003. The show has beaten Letterman, usually No. 2 in the late-night ratings, in three out of the first four weeks since Aug. 29.

More than three years ago, ABC looked into poaching Letterman from CBS for the late-night slot occupied by "Nightline."