Peter Alexander is leaving NBC News after 22 years at the network, which includes his longtime role as co-host of Saturday TODAY.

Alexander, 49, announced his departure on the air March 28, sharing that he wants to spend more time with his two daughters and “challenge himself with something new.” Alexander, his wife Alison Starling and their daughters, Ava, 12, and Emma, 10, are based in Washington, D.C., while Saturday TODAY broadcasts from 30 Rock’s Studio 1A in New York City.

“I’ve been away from home more than 80 nights in the last seven months. More than 200 Friday nights away from my family in the last seven years,” Alexander said. “So, in this limited window before my daughters lose interest in hanging out with me…I’m eager to carve out a better balance between my personal and professional lives.”

Alexander joined Saturday TODAY in October 2018, and in 2021, he was named NBC’s co-chief White House correspondent alongside Kristen Welker. Alexander and Welker then together hosted Saturday TODAY for three years, from 2020 to 2023, until Welker succeeded Chuck Todd as moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Since then, he’s sat at the anchor desk with Laura Jarrett, who joined NBC in January 2023 as a senior legal correspondent.

Jarrett said of Alexander’s departure, “Peter: We love you, we are going to miss you.” She continued: “You are a brilliant journalist. You are a good and decent man, and you are an extraordinary father. You only get one shot to be Ava and Emma’s dad…they are lucky to have you as their father.”

Alexander joined NBC News in 2004, and has said that booking an interview with then-Cuban President Fidel Castro was his big break. He went on to report more international news, including Iraq’s 2005 election and the death of Osama bin Laden. His work has taken him to Baghdad, Banda Aceh, Beijing and more.

Alexander celebrated his 20th anniversary with NBC in August 2024 and shared that he “never imagined being a political reporter.”

“What I learned the most is what it means to be a storyteller,” he said at the time. “I really feel like we have a higher responsibility doing this for a living. Being journalists, you have the trust of the audience, the trust of the people whose stories you’re telling. That’s something that I take so seriously.”

At the time, he also called his Saturday TODAY colleagues his “closest friends.”

“It’s hard to believe, but I have been part of the NBC family for longer than I’ve had my own family,” Alexander said during his farewell on March 28. “Studio 1A, being right here, with this team and with all the folks you don’t see on TV, this is literally my happy place.”