Every few years, a major news event forces the big three evening newscasts to pack their bags and justify the kind of production budgets that increasingly skeptical executives eye every quarter. President Donald Trump’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing was one of those moments. All three networks dispatched their anchors to the region — or at least tried to. When the dust settled on a week of coverage, NBC Nightly News and Tom Llamas came out on top. Here’s why.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way first. Yes, CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil couldn’t get a Chinese visa in time and ended up broadcasting from Taipei. That story practically writes itself, and frankly, plenty of people have already written it. A CBS source even told the New York Post that the decision to put Dokoupil in Taiwan was a “cover your a–” move.
Then, to add insult to injury, a cameraman suffered a medical emergency on air during Dokoupil’s very first broadcast from Taiwan. It’s a rough week by any measure.
But dissecting the CBS Evening News situation is almost too easy at this point. The more interesting — and more instructive — question is what separated NBC from ABC among the anchors who actually made it to Beijing.
Muir Was Good. Llamas Was Better.
Let’s be fair to David Muir and the team at World News Tonight. Muir’s broadcasts from China didn’t lack for substance. He reported from Beijing, covered the summit itself, and even came face-to-face with humanoid robots at one of China’s biggest AI developer conferences — a smart piece of enterprise television that showcased China’s technological ambitions during a week when the global tech race was very much front of mind.
There wasn’t anything wrong or bad about what ABC produced. Muir’s team did their jobs well.
But NBC Nightly News went deeper. Llamas and the Nightly team reported on China’s booming electric vehicle industry — a topic with real resonance for American viewers watching gas prices climb amid the ongoing war with Iran. Additional coverage of tariff prices on Chinese EVs coming to the forefront last week only exacerbated the topic. And Llamas’ coverage.
NBC Nightly News took viewers to the Great Wall of China. They sat down with Secretary of State Marco Rubio for an interview that covered Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, Taiwan, and the broader U.S.-China relationship in ways that mattered.
Rubio even told Llamas, “The difference is my job now is no longer just to be a senator. My job is a different job. I’m the chief diplomat of the country, and I execute on the president’s foreign policy.” That’s a consequential interview, and NBC landed it.
The Thursday, May 14, broadcast of NBC Nightly News marked a milestone — Llamas anchored live from the steps of the Imperial Ancestral Hall in Beijing, the first time an evening newscast had ever originated from that location. That’s the kind of visual storytelling that reminds viewers why it still matters that a network sends its anchor overseas rather than phoning it in from a studio in New York.
The Streaming Commitment Sealed It
Here’s where NBC truly separated itself — and it’s a detail that might not get the credit it deserves in the broader media conversation.
NBC announced in advance that Llamas would anchor both NBC Nightly News and Top Story from China — and he delivered on that commitment every single night.
Think about what that means logistically. Llamas was operating on Chinese time, navigating a foreign country, managing the demands of a major international news story, and coordinating production across multiple platforms. It would’ve been completely understandable — and no one would’ve batted an eye — if NBC had quietly slid another anchor into the Top Story chair for the week. The juice, you might argue, wouldn’t be worth the squeeze.
But they didn’t do that. Llamas helmed Top Story, as normal, from China. That’s a commitment to the streaming audience that a lot of networks still treat as an afterthought. It signals something about how NBC values its NBC News NOW viewers — and how seriously Llamas takes the full scope of his role. He didn’t treat Top Story like a side gig to be delegated when things got complicated. He showed up.
That’s the difference between a good week of coverage and a winning one. Muir and ABC turned in solid work. And they deserve praise, undeniably. But Llamas and NBC turned in more of it, across more platforms, with more depth — and without cutting corners on the streaming side when cutting corners would’ve been easy. That’s why NBC Nightly News won the week.
Now, we’ll patiently wait and see if the ratings reflect it.
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Garrett Searight is Barrett Media’s News Editor, which includes writing daily news stories, features, and opinion columns. He joined Barrett Media in 2022 after a decade leading several radio brands in several formats, as well as a 5-year stint working in local television. In addition to his work with Barrett Media, he is a radio and TV play-by-play broadcaster. Reach out to him at Garrett@BarrettMedia.com.
