This NYT article talks about all the very senior newscasting talent still on the air -- a lot -- after announcing they were going to step back a bit and smell the roses. It also explores why.

Some excerpts:

The article starts by talking about Mike Wallace, still going strong at 87 even though some of his replacement parts need replacing.

Mr. Wallace has plenty of company in his nonretirement. On March 31, ABC News announced that Ted Koppel (65) would leave both "Nightline" and the network in December. He joins Tom Brokaw (65) and Dan Rather (73), who decamped as anchors of the evening news in December and March respectively. They were preceded by Barbara Walters (73), who, after a quarter century, stepped down as a co-anchor of the prime-time news program "20/20" in the fall.

Their goodbyes were trumpeted in network press releases and news articles as representing the end of an era. Each of them was supposed to enter a kind of twilight period - one in which new stars would take over.

But for those who looked carefully, there was a disclaimer, albeit in fine print: none of the so-called departees expressed any interest in actually stepping away from viewers' TV screens ...

And why is this happening?

Oddly, the senior journalists may be lingering on television precisely because of their networks' desire to attract younger audiences. All of the network news divisions are desperate to capture the 18-to-34 set - their current audiences are literally dying off - but none has yet figured out how to create the next generation of anchors. Which may take quite some time. While the potential news stars of tomorrow - people like Anderson Cooper on CNN, Bob Woodruff on ABC and Mika Brzezinski on CBS - are being groomed, they do not (with the possible exception of Mr. Williams) have the star power of the familiar faces of news past.