Curtain comes after 30 years at Inside Edition for Deborah Norville

NEW YORK (AP) – Deborah Norville was a model of stability for a television news industry in a constant statement state. She began hosting the syndicated Newsmagazine “Inside Edition” in 1995 and has remained there ever since. Now the 30-year-old run is coming to an end. Norville, 66, signs off on May 21. She intends to celebrate Europe with a long holiday with her husband and try something new when she returns. She holds ‘The Perfect Line’, a Trivia show that starts to broadcast this fall. No successor was called “Inside Edition”. “I’m very excited about the game,” she said. “It’s nice, and who doesn’t want to give someone else’s money away to people who would like to take it?” Three decades ago, Norville left CBS News for a genre largely discharged as tabloid television. She is proud to tell stories that add value to the lives of the audience: a company that makes a device to help suffocating victims says that it has traced a thousand uses for people who say they learned it through an ‘inside edition’ story. During Covid, the show started broadcasting from her kitchen almost immediately and never stopped, as she built a temporary studio in her New York home. “We were a well-known presence at a time when everything was on a top turvy,” she said, “and I think the bond with our audience was made even stronger.” As she prepares to adapt to a life that is no longer controlled by news cycles, Norville stops to think about her time with the Associated Press. ___ Associated Press: You made the decision a while ago to leave “inside edition”. Now that this is happening, how does it feel? Norville: It really hit me today. This is the same day when my daughter and husband (to the studio) came for a personal interview for a piece they do-a farewell to Deb. My daughter was on “inside edition” the day she was born. Nine hours after giving birth, the crew was in my hospital room with “inside edition” because they couldn’t find anyone else to do the show, which was ridiculous. To see her, this beautiful, 27-year-old adult woman, such a beautiful and wonderful and lovely and perfect, to interview what it is like to make her mother work for her entire life in this place, it was like, Oh my gosh, there is something important to happen. AP: When you first joined, tabloids are considered less respectful as networks. How do you think that is changed? Norville: Do you remember Tom Shales of the Washington Post? Tom Shales actually sits in the newspaper that I sell my credibility. The old Deborah would have just gone into a fetal position and cried. The new I said, “Ah, I don’t think so.” I never knew that my credibility had anything to do with the peacock or eyeball on my salary because I worked at NBC and CBS. My credibility has to do with the show that I was in front, the stories I personally produced and reported and that we post on television every day. All I asked was that people were watching. AP: What is the work you will remember most if you look back on it? Norville: Inside Edition has developed a lot in the thirty years I was here. When I arrived, it was still the hard core, tabloid, beach blanket-bingo-many girls on sandy beaches in small bikinis. We don’t do it anymore. … It has developed so that we as a program have become a companion to people – not just on television, but we are a companion on the internet, on social media, on YouTube. The content we do is observable, but also very related and meaningful. AP: It is unusual these days to stay with the same work for a long time. Why did it encourage you? Norville: I came to ‘inside edition’ because I expected my second child. I knew it was going to be a boy (Norville and her husband, Karl Wellner, have two sons and a girl). I have rejected an offer from CBS News to be ‘Correspondent’ Correspondent four days a week and anchor the weekend news one night. I would have been for the work that Katie Couric finally got. But those four evenings a week would be on the way all over the country, and I didn’t think I could be the kind of mother I wanted to be, and definitely the kind of woman I wanted to be when I was on my way. I just didn’t know how I could do it. AP: Any regret for not being taken? Norville: Ah, probably. But here’s the antidote to it. You look at where the road has taken you and you take a penchant for what you see at that place in the road where you are yourself. … The biggest thing is that I look at my family, which is most important to me. My husband and I have been married for 37 and a half years. I have three incredible children who enjoy being with us, who are solid citizens, who are friendly and giving and zealous and entrepreneur. I didn’t mess up my kids. To get to “inside edition” for the right reasons, that was the right reason for me. ___ David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social