Rahel Solomon told viewers on Monday's 5 a.m. broadcast of "Early Start" that the week would be her last at CNN, making the announcement live on the air with little fanfare and fewer details.
"I have decided that this will be my last week at CNN. More to come on what's next for me, but I'm really excited about this next chapter," Solomon said during the broadcast.
The 37-year-old anchor did not provide any details on her next move. Friday will be her last day.
Solomon joined CNN in 2022, initially working as a business correspondent for CNN International before eventually moving into the anchor chair on "Early Start." Before CNN, she worked at CNBC as a general news reporter and, before that, as a morning news anchor for KYW in her hometown of Philadelphia.
Her departure comes just months after returning from a six-month maternity leave that began last June, the New York Post reported. Solomon announced on Instagram in December that she had become a mother and that she was returning to the network. That return was apparently short-lived.
A CNN spokesperson offered the standard corporate send-off:
"We are grateful to Rahel for all her contributions to CNN over the past four years and are supportive of her decision."
The spokesperson added that the network wishes her "all the best in her next chapter."
Solomon's exit, while framed as a personal decision, lands at a moment when CNN's institutional footing is anything but stable. The network's parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, is being acquired by Paramount Skydance in a deal valued at $110 billion, expected to close this fall. When a massive corporate merger looms overhead, the smart money says talent with options exercises them early.
And CNN has not exactly been a growth story for on-air talent. The network's ratings have cratered over the past several years as audiences have migrated toward outlets and platforms that don't treat half the country as a threat to democracy. The 5 a.m. time slot is not exactly prime real estate to begin with, and anchoring a show that fewer and fewer people watch is not a career accelerant.
Solomon kept her farewell gracious, thanking her team and the broader CNN staff.
"Thank you to the team at 'Early Start.' To the larger team here at CNN — I'm going to be cheering you on. I look forward to watching."
She closed with the kind of line people use when they already know where they're going: "So this is truly not goodbye, but see you soon."
When an anchor leaves a network without naming a destination but says she's "really excited," it typically means the ink is drying on something. Solomon is young, has network experience across multiple outlets, and carries no particular ideological baggage that would limit her options. She could land at a competing network, a streaming platform, or one of the digital-first media companies that have been poaching traditional TV talent for the past two years.
The broader pattern is worth noting. CNN is not hemorrhaging household names at the moment, but a steady drip of departures, especially from anchors who joined relatively recently, tells a story about internal morale and external opportunity. Four years is not a long stint. Leaving months after returning from maternity leave is even shorter in practical terms. People don't walk away from stable positions at legacy networks unless they see something better or sense something worse on the horizon.
The $110 billion merger will reshape the entire corporate structure above CNN. Nobody knows what the network looks like on the other side of that deal. Solomon apparently decided she didn't need to find out.
