Plot

Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) is San Diego's finest anchorman. He works along with his friends and co-reporters Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd), who works as the lead field reporter, sports reporter Champion "Champ" Kind (David Koechner), and weatherman Brick Tamland (Steve Carell) at Channel 4 News. After a successful day of work, the team is notified their station has again maintained its long-held status as the highest-rated in town, leading them to throw a wild party (even though their boss, Ed Harken (Fred Willard), told his assistant Garth Holiday (Chris Parnell) not to let this happen). During the party Ron sees a woman and attempts to seduce her but fails miserably.

The next day Ed, the executive director of the news station, is forced by the network that owns the station to bring a female worker onto the team. He hires Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate), a news reporter from Asheville, North Carolina, who turns out to be the woman Ron tried to woo at the party the previous night. After being told that Lin-Wong, a famous panda at the San Diego Zoo is pregnant, the news team has a confrontation with Wes Mantooth (Vince Vaughn) and his Channel 9 Evening News team, who are second in the most recent ratings. Brick, Champ and Brian attempt to seduce Veronica using inept and arrogant flirting, but they all fail. Ron ends up asking her out under the guise of helping out a new co-worker, which she accepts. During their date, Ron starts playing the jazz flute in his friend Tino's (Fred Armisen) club. After a change of heart, Veronica sleeps with Ron after their wildly successful date. The next day, despite agreeing with Veronica to keep the relationship discreet, Ron loudly announces that he is dating Veronica and having sex with her.

The next day as Ron is heading to work, he throws a burrito out his car window and hits a motorcyclist (Jack Black) in the head, distracting the biker enough to cause him to crash his bike. Furious, the motorcyclist retaliates by punting Ron's dog Baxter off a bridge. A horribly saddened and incoherent Ron calls Brian from a payphone to tell him about Baxter, while Brian tells Ron to rush to the studio to prevent Ed from putting Veronica on the air as Ron's replacement. Despite Ron's efforts to arrive early, they put Veronica on the air and she becomes famous.

After Ron arrives, he has an argument with Veronica about the situation and they break up. The next day, Veronica is made co-anchor, much to Ron's displeasure. The co-anchors soon become fierce rivals and bitter enemies.

To ease Ron's pain, he and his news team agree to buy new suits. While walking in search of the suit store, the team is confronted yet again by Wes Mantooth and his team and the two newsteams decide to have a brawl. However, just as they prepare to fight, more news teams arrive, from Channel 2, from the Spanish channel, and from public television. Despite a decision to ban any touching of hair during the fight, things escalate quickly (including one man being set on fire, another getting his arm chopped off, and Brick killing a rival reporter with a trident). The fight ends when cops enter the scene, and the crew heads back to the newsroom.

While in a restaurant celebrating Veronica's big debut, one of Veronica's friends tells her that Ron will read anything that's written on the teleprompter, no matter what it is. So Veronica sneaks into the station and changes the words in Ron's teleprompter. The next day, instead of Ron delivering his signature "You stay classy, San Diego," Ron closes the broadcast with "Go fuck yourself, San Diego." After hearing this, an angry mob gathers outside the studio and Ed is forced to fire Ron (who is oblivious until shown video of what he just said). Veronica sees she has gone too far and attempts to apologize, but Ron dismisses her, calling her a "heartless bitch demon" while being led through the mob by security.

Three months later Ron is unemployed, has no friends (if anything, he is actually the town pariah) and is a slovenly drunk, while Veronica has become extremely famous. When Lin-Wong the panda is about to give birth, all the news teams head for the zoo to cover the story, but in an attempt to sabotage her, the public news anchor (Tim Robbins) pushes Veronica into the Kodiak bear habitat, where any noise would infuriate the sleeping bears. When Ed can't find Veronica, he calls the bar where Ron spends most of his time and reluctantly asks him to return. Ron then summons the rest of his team by blowing the "News Horn." He calls for his news team to "ASSEMBLE!;" however, it turns out they were all standing a foot away playing pool. Baxter hears this call and follows the voice to find Ron once again. Once at the zoo, the team finds Veronica, and Ron jumps into the bear pen to save her; this attracts everyone else in the zoo to watch. The Channel 4 news team jumps in to help Ron but is easily defeated. Just as the leader of the bears is about to rip Ron and Veronica apart, Baxter (who was seen to emerge from an unknown river), shows up and convinces the bear to leave Ron and the team alone.

After Ron and Veronica reconcile, it's shown that in years to come, Brian becomes the host of a FOX reality show named Intercourse Island, Brick is George W. Bush's top political advisor, Champ was a commentator for the NFL before sexually harassing Terry Bradshaw, and Ron and Veronica are co-anchors for World News Center.