I don't know for sure how much of a chance Gadi Schwartz or Hallie Jackson had. I think it was safe to say it was an in house choice succeeding Lester Holt on "NBC Nightly News".

Something else to chew on. Jose Diaz-Balart is the Saturday anchor of "Nightly News". He's also a Spanish language newsman at Telemundo, which is NBC's Spanish Language network and currently anchors "MSNBC Reports" at 10A (CT) weekday mornings from Miami. I don't know if Jose had a legit chance to get promoted either, when also considering that Holt also anchored weekends before getting promoted 10 years ago to replace Brian Williams on the dinnertime newscast.

I also bring this up because MSNBC, CNBC & other NBC Universal outlets are being spun off in the coming months. I don't think these channels will have NBC News' talent anymore once these channels are spun off. Keep an eye on this moving forward.