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With the rapidly changing media industry, younger news anchors may be better in tune to what young audiences want, and new faces and broadcasting styles may attract more viewers, he said.

Yu Guoming, deputy dean of the School of Journalism and Communication at Renmin University of China, said Li and Zhang's retirement is a normal personnel change and will not have much effect on Xinwen Lianbo.

CCTV employs strict rules and standards to ensure consistency in style for its programs, including Xinwen Lianbo, he said.

"Xinwen Lianbo will not see a big change in the way it delivers the news after new anchors take over," he said.

Other senior news anchors have been replaced by younger ones in recent years. Xing Zhibin, a former news anchorwoman at CCTV, retired in 2009 after serving as the top anchor at Xinwen Lianbo for 28 years. Her exit from the position drew a lot of attention from the public.

Li and Zhang could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.

Both of the veteran journalists graduated from Communication University of China, which has a high reputation for producing news anchors. They both started to work at CCTV in the 1980s and have been anchors for Xinwen Lianbo for many years.

Li, director of CCTV's broadcasting department, covered a number of major events, including the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China in 1997, and the magnitude-8 Sichuan earthquake that left more than 80,000 people dead or missing in 2008.