Craig Melvin Is Named Hoda Kotb’s Replacement on ‘Today’

Craig Melvin, the veteran NBC News host, will succeed Hoda Kotb as an anchor of the network’s flagship morning show, “Today,” the company announced Thursday morning.

Mr. Melvin will start in the new role, teaming with Savannah Guthrie, on Jan. 13.

The position, one of the most prominent in television news, opened after Ms. Kotb, who has been at the network for more than two decades, announced in September that she would step down early next year. Ms. Kotb, who will remain as a contributor to the show, said at the time that she wanted to spend more time with her young children, and that it was “time to turn the page on what has been a dream book, a dream quarter-century.”

Ms. Kotb, 60, will take her final turn as co-anchor of “Today” on Jan. 10.

By selecting Mr. Melvin, 45, network executives chose to go the steadiest route possible. He has been the news anchor of “Today” since 2018, frequently joining Ms. Guthrie and Ms. Kotb on the set at some point in the 7 a.m. hour. He is also a co-host of the show’s 9 a.m. hour, and used to be an anchor of the weekend edition of “Today.”

Mr. Melvin also was an anchor on MSNBC before leaving his daily 11 a.m. show on the cable network two years ago.

“Dreams do come true,” he said in an interview before the news was announced on “Today.”

“As someone said to me, this is an obit job,” he continued. “When you die one day, this is the first thing that gets mentioned in an obituary after it mentions you were a husband and a father.”

Mr. Melvin said he found out about his selection several weeks ago. (NBC News executives kept it under wraps until after the presidential election.) Ms. Kotb said in an interview that it was such a secret that they had to develop a code term in order to toast his success, since so few people knew of it. The code? “Let’s Go Mets.”