Janai Norman, the co-anchor of Good Morning America Weekend, is leaving ABC after the network chose not to renew her contract when it expired in April 2026.
The news was first reported by Oliver Darcy’s Status newsletter on April 1 and confirmed by multiple outlets in the days since. Norman, 36, has been with ABC in various capacities since 2011, fifteen years, and served as a weekend co-anchor alongside Whit Johnson and Gio Benitez since 2022.
ABC News declined to comment. Norman’s last broadcast date has not been announced, and it is not yet clear whether she will be replaced on the weekend desk or remain at the network in any other capacity.
On Friday, April 3, Norman broke her silence with an emotional video posted to Instagram. “I’d hoped that we’d have more time,” she said.
She made clear the timing was not her decision and that the departure genuinely breaks her heart.
Who Is Janai Norman?
Norman started at ABC in 2011 as an intern while still in college. After graduating she worked at local television stations in Missouri, Oklahoma, and Florida, building the kind of regional market experience that forms the backbone of most television news careers.
ABC News hired her officially in 2016, bringing her in as a Washington-based reporter and then moving her to New York.
She worked her way through the network’s infrastructure with the kind of methodical competence that rarely makes headlines but keeps a news organization running.
She anchored World News Now and America This Morning. She covered Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s departure from the royal family, the death of Jeffrey Epstein, and the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian.
She hosted the Pop News segment on GMA Weekend and was instrumental in launching the second hour of Saturday’s GMA in October 2019.
She anchored ABC News Live Weekend on a rotating basis as the streaming network expanded its weekend coverage.
In 2022, then-ABC News president Kim Godwin promoted Norman to GMA Weekend co-anchor, replacing Dan Harris, who had left the show in 2021.
In the staff memo announcing the promotion, Godwin wrote,
“Janai is a versatile and talented journalist, whether she is anchoring at the desk, conducting a one-on-one interview with a newsmaker of the day or reporting in the field on breaking news. She puts her heart into her work and makes it a priority to cover the most important underreported issues of our time, including the maternal mortality crisis facing Black women and the stigma of mental health.”
Sources familiar with the contract situation told multiple outlets that the decision was straightforward. “Her contract was up. There was a decision not to renew.” There is no suggestion of performance issues.
The #FreeTheCurls Movement
One of the most significant things Janai Norman did during her time at ABC had nothing to do with a specific news story.
In 2019, she wrote an essay for ABC News about her decision to stop straightening her hair and wear her natural curls on air, a choice that sounds simple and was anything but.
“For nearly 30 years, I was conditioned by a standard of beauty that left me out,” she wrote. “I was not included. TV, magazines, society, by omission, told me I was not beautiful, my hair needed to be bone straight, my eyes blue or green, my skin fair, and I didn’t make the cut.”
She explained that learning she was pregnant in 2017 changed something in her.
She knew she wanted her child to grow up loving themselves exactly as they are, and the best way to encourage that was to model it. “Accepting my hair as it grows from my head” was part of that.
The essay and the decision behind it kicked off the #FreeTheCurls movement, a call among Black journalists to embrace their natural hair on camera without fear of professional consequences.
Norman described thinking specifically about “the reporter who’s the only Black woman at her station or in her small market, who wants to wear her natural hair but is too fearful for whatever reason.”
The movement reached journalists across the country and remains one of her most lasting contributions to the industry.
She also appeared in the Hulu documentary special Breaking the Mental Health Stigma for Black Women, speaking openly about her own mental health journey and the particular pressures facing Black women in high-profile careers.
The Bigger Shake-Up At GMA
Norman’s exit is the latest in a series of departures that have reshaped the GMA franchise over the past few years.
The most dramatic was the 2022 removal of Amy Robach and TJ Holmes from GMA3, the show’s weekday third hour, following news of their relationship. Both eventually left ABC entirely.
The network folded GMA3 back into the main show rather than replace them, redistributing duties among Lara Spencer, Gio Benitez, and Sam Champion.
Just three months before Norman’s departure was reported, ABC News correspondent Matt Gutman made the jump to CBS News, the first major on-air hire by CBS News under its new editor-in-chief Bari Weiss.
Gutman had been at ABC since 2008, working across GMA, World News Tonight, Nightline, and 20/20.
His departure signaled that the competitive landscape for morning and evening news talent is actively shifting, with CBS in particular aggressive about poaching from other networks.
Norman is a mother of three children. She welcomed her second son in December 2023.
She has spoken publicly about the challenge of balancing motherhood with a television news career that requires weekend mornings and early hours. Her husband is named Eli.
Following her exit from GMA Weekend, she will presumably have more time with her family, a detail she acknowledged in her Instagram video.
She also hosts Oh Baby!, a wildlife show about how animal parents raise their young that airs on ABC stations and is currently in its sixth season.
It is unclear whether that show will continue with her as host following her GMA Weekend exit.
What’s Next For GMA?
ABC has not announced a replacement for Norman on the weekend desk, and Whit Johnson and Gio Benitez are expected to continue as the show’s anchors.
Meteorologist Somara Theodore rounds out the current weekend team.
For Norman, fifteen years is a significant tenure at any organization, and her track record, the correspondent work, the anchor roles, the movement she started, the Hulu documentary, suggests she is not going to be without options for long.
Where she lands next is one of the more closely watched questions in morning television right now.
She said it breaks her heart. That is worth taking seriously.
Janai Norman contract had ended is not good enough reason not to renew it. There has to be a more specific reason why her contract was not renewed. She is an excellent anchor, and fans have a right to upset..