Jonathan Storm: Sawyer to anchor ABC 'World News'

Morning show veteran Diane Sawyer will replace Charles Gibson in January as anchor of the flagship ABC evening program

World News,

the network announced yesterday.

It's an historic transition, as Sawyer joins CBS's Katie Couric at 6:30 p.m., installing women for the first time as keepers of two of the three network evening news shows.

Sawyer also becomes the third consecutive solo anchor drawn from the ranks of the morning news/talk programs. She was Gibson's partner on Good Morning America before he took over World News.

"Morning anchors don't normally come to mind when the big jobs open," said Temple University professor Amy Caples, a longtime fixture on the Philadelphia broadcast news scene and veteran host of a morning show at CBS3, "but they are generally incredibly versatile and well-versed.

"There's no better preparation for the anchor job than being in the field and in the studio for two to four hours a day."

Gibson, 66, had planned to retire in 2007 but stayed on after being asked to take over World News in 2006 when Bob Woodruff was seriously injured in Iraq and his coanchor, Elizabeth Vargas, became pregnant.

"It was an honor to do so," Gibson told his coworkers in an e-mail yesterday. "I love this news department, and all who work in it, to the depths of my soul."

Sawyer, who will turn 64 in December and is more polarizing than the avuncular Gibson, may bring new viewers, fans from Good Morning America, to World News, Caples said. But she may equally alienate members of the current audience, predominantly over 50, predominantly male, who would defect to the last remaining male anchor, Brian Williams at NBC Nightly News.

After a brief spurt in 2007 following Gibson's ascension to the anchor desk when ABC World News was the top-rated program, Nightly resumed its run, started in the mid-'90s, as No. 1. CBS is a distant third.

Viewership has eroded constantly this decade for the network evening news programs, but, averaging more than 20 million viewers nightly in the most recent week for which ratings are available, it surpasses the daily peak cable news audience by nearly 400 percent.

Still, the news shows are a distant second in fiscal importance to the networks' morning news/talk programs, and Sawyer, the star of Good Morning America, which regularly finishes second by about 1 million viewers to NBC's Today, will be sorely missed. Speculation is all over the lot as to what ABC will do with GMA, which has won the daytime Emmy for best morning show three years running.

"Diane will continue for the next four months, and we have an exceedingly talented team in Sam, Chris and Robin," said ABC spokesman Jeffrey Snyder, referring to Sawyer's GMA colleagues Sam Champion, Chris Cuomo, and Robin Roberts.

"We have every expectation of maintaining a four-person team, and we have four months to work that out."

ABC News president David Westin said in a statement that he and Gibson, who hopes to stay on as a part-time ABC News contributor, had been talking about his retirement for several weeks.

"I respect his decision," Westin said, "just as I respect the enormous contribution he has made to ABC News through the years."

"Diane Sawyer is the right person to succeed Charlie and build on what he has accomplished," Westin said.

"She has an outstanding and varied career in television journalism, beginning with her role as a State Department correspondent and continuing at 60 Minutes, Primetime Live, and most recently Good Morning America."

Sawyer came to ABC from CBS in 1989. Before joining CBS in 1978, Sawyer, who graduated from Wellesley College two years ahead of Hillary Rodham Clinton, worked in the Nixon administration and helped the president write his memoirs after his resignation.

Gibson, a Princeton University graduate who was news director at the college radio station, coanchored GMA for 19 years, beginning in 1987. Before that, he covered Congress and the White House for ABC.

Caples said the future newscasters in her Broadcasting Performance class were unimpressed yesterday by the idea that two of the three major TV news broadcasts would be anchored by women.

"I thought it was incredibly exciting news," she said. "And I was stunned at how little reaction it evoked among my students. It just didn't seem to resonate with them that it was an amazing, never-before, couldn't-have-imagined-it-20-years-ago event. They didn't bat an eyelash."

Could it be not only that college-age people are used to gender equality, but also that none of them watch the evening news in the first place?