Bob Costas Says He’s Done With NBC After 40 Years

The Peacock is losing one of its most colorful, popular and sometimes controversial broadcasters. Forty years after he joined NBC, Bob Costas confirmed today that he’ll no longer work there.

“It’s all settled quietly and happily for all concerned,” Costas told The New York Post, which confirmed the news with the network. The broadcaster also told the paper that he will continue to work for MLB Network, where he’s set to take part in its Hall of Fame inductee announcement this month, along with calling 20 or so games for the network.

Costas, whose contract runs into 2021, also said he’s mulling a different kind of program for MLBN. “If I do anything else, it will be a hybrid of my HBO show and Later’” he told the Post, referring to the premium channel’s On the Record with Bob Costas and the NBC late-night show he fronted from 1988-94.

Word first surfaced in the summer that Costas — who joined NBC in 1979 — was mulling an exit. Reports at the time had him and his reps talking with the Peacock about be let out of his current contract. “Sometimes you get to a point where it is not a fit anymore,” he said at the time.

Costas has covered just about every major sport during his career, with his NBC duties include more than a dozen Olympic Games, multiple Super Bowl, World Series, NBA Finals and Triple Crown races. He also has been a lightning rod for social issues — from his on-air monologues on gun control that angered many to supporting Colin Kaepernick and the NFL’s kneelers and speaking out against the league’s problem with concussions.