Network Television Stations Shuffle New Anchors

JEFFREY BROWN: ABC News is looking for a little peace and quiet after a tumultuous and sad year.

PETER JENNINGS, Former Host, "ABC World News Tonight": Finally this evening, a brief note about change.

JEFFREY BROWN: First came the announcement of Peter Jennings' lung cancer and his death last August.

ANNOUNCER: This is "World News Tonight" with Bob Woodruff and Elizabeth Vargas.

JEFFREY BROWN: In January, ABC debuted a dual-anchor format, featuring two young stars of the news division. But barely a month later, co-anchor Bob Woodruff and a cameraman were grievously wounded in Iraq.

Woodruff's co-anchor, Elizabeth Vargas, carried on without him. But with her impending maternity leave and the program's viewership down by nearly one million over the last year, ABC News made a change last week.

ELIZABETH VARGAS, Former Co-Anchor, "World News Tonight": This is my last broadcast as co-anchor of "World News Tonight."

CHARLES GIBSON, Host, "World News Tonight": Good evening. On Memorial Day...

JEFFREY BROWN: On Monday, Charles Gibson became anchor of the program after spending much of the last 20 years co-hosting "Good Morning America."

CHARLES GIBSON: The critical thing is that we just get back to cruising speed, that we be able to do what this news division does very well without having to look over our shoulders all the time.

JEFFREY BROWN: The 63-year-old Gibson brings nearly 40 years' experience to the broadcast. Come the fall, he'll compete with another morning veteran making the move to the night: Katie Couric.

The "Today Show" co-anchor's 15-year tenure at the helm of the NBC News ratings and financial juggernaut ended this morning with a three-hour tribute. Couric is now heading to CBS News and its evening anchor's chair.

The perennial third-place evening news has shown life of late, adding viewers under the regency of veteran CBS hand Bob Schieffer, who has guided the broadcast for 15 months since Dan Rather's departure. Couric, who will earn a reported $13 million a year, is taking off the month of June before reporting to work at CBS, in anticipation of re-launching the "CBS Evening News" in the fall.

JEFFREY BROWN: And to help us look behind all of these recent moves, we're joined by Ken Auletta, who chronicles the news business in his column for the New Yorker magazine.

Ken, let's begin with the morning programs. How important are they to their networks?

KEN AULETTA, Columnist, The New Yorker: Oh, they are critical. In fact, if you look at "Today Show" on NBC, it is the single most profitable show on all of NBC. Take "E.R.," take the old "Friends." "Today Show" made more money, $250 million a year, than any other program on NBC.

So if you look at news and you say, "Well, news viewership is going down." The evening news is declining, not only in ratings, but in profitability it still makes money, but not nearly as much, you say, "Where is the economic engine in news?" It's in the morning.

JEFFREY BROWN: And why is that? Has the audience changed or grown? What's happened?

KEN AULETTA: It's the one day part in all of network television which has suffered these audience losses, as people have many more choices, not just cable but the Internet, the iPod, et cetera. It's a one day part in all of network television where the audience has actually grown.

And that's in part a reflection of changing lifestyles. More women are in the workforce, and more people are getting up early to exercise and have a fuller day. And they want a fix in the morning of the morning shows.

Not just network, by the way. You see it on local. You see it at 5:00, 6:00 a.m. Those local shows are growing, too.

JEFFREY BROWN: How have the shows themselves evolved? I mean, I'm wondering, do they see themselves as entertainment shows, or as news programs, or some kind of mix?

KEN AULETTA: They see themselves as a hybrid of entertainment and news, but increasingly you see entertainment crowding out the news.

If you look at the three morning shows, they're very heavy on entertainment. If you looked at the goodbye for Katie Couric this morning, three hours, it was -- there was no Iraq. There was no new secretary of treasury appointed. There was no Afghanistan, or the economy, or poverty, or anything else. It was all Katie.

And they've become very personality-driven. The assumption behind that is that, when people wake up in the morning, they want to like someone. They want to have a Katie, a next-door neighbor with them, Matt, a next-door neighbor with them, Charlie, Diane.

And they know these people by their first names. It's not "Rather." It's "Katie." And, therefore, they want people who are friendly and they want friendly news. They want smiles; they don't want a lot of investigative reporting.

That's the assumption they make about the audience. There are a lot of people I know -- myself included -- when I wake up, and I'm frustrated when I just see -- I don't want cooking lessons in the morning. I want to find out what happened in the world.

JEFFREY BROWN: So these morning shows are hugely important, and yet two of their biggest stars, Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson, have left to go to the evening news. Now, what does that tell you?

KEN AULETTA: Well, what it told me, actually, it's more personal than it is institutional. In Katie's case, she's done it for 15 years and was ready to move on.

When you looked at it, NBC tried to keep Katie Couric. They couldn't keep her on in the morning. She was tired. She had exhausted that format for her. She wanted some new challenge.

What's the new challenge? There is none in news, unless she wants to do kind of an entertainment thing. And she came out of a serious news background, and I think she wanted to use her news muscles.

The only option for her, since the anchor seat was taken at NBC, was really to go to -- at the time, it was taken at ABC. The only option for her was to go to CBS and be an anchor there.

In Charlie Gibson's case, he is a good soldier, filled in, in the morning, for them, and has done it since 1999, which is his second tour of duty. He wanted to go back to news where he had been. And so, personally, he wanted to get out. And the delay in that had as much to say about Diane Sawyer also wanting to get out as it did in the decision at the network.

JEFFREY BROWN: You know, of course, there's been a lot of hand-wringing in recent years about the evening news programs and their future. I'm wondering, do these moves of major stars to these programs, and the fact that Bob Schieffer was able to add audience or at least hold it in the last 18 months, is there any new thinking about the economic viability of the news, the nightly news programs and their audiences?

KEN AULETTA: Well, nightly news, in the scheme of things, within network news divisions, nightly news has become less important than the morning news, but it's still important. And it's not just important in terms of its identity to the network and its history, the Edward R. Murrow, you know, the Tiffany Network at CBS, Dave Gatwick (ph), Tom Brokaw, John Chancellor, Peter Jennings at ABC, but it's also important to local stations.

They love that affiliation they have with network news and with the anchors, who are a big stars. I mean, if you walk through an airport, as I did some years ago when I was going a book on the networks, with any of the news anchors, they were bigger celebrities than John Travolta, for instance.

And the reason for that is they're in 10 million homes, each of them, every night, every night. And it's in your living room. It's not a movie theater, which doesn't even get 10 million people to watch an entire movie by John Travolta. So it's an amazing fame and popularity they have and importance they have in our lives.

JEFFREY BROWN: And it's interesting. There was talk, of course, about changing the model for these programs, maybe different co-anchors or a different way of presenting the news, and yet they all seem to have come back to the main one star anchor.

KEN AULETTA: Well, part of the problem is they say they have 22 minutes. They actually have only about 18.5, after you subtract the commercials, and the bumpers, and the news, and the promotions.

So the problem becomes it's very little time. And to split that 18.5 minutes, much of it is with reports from the field, not the anchor, but to split that among two anchors becomes a real problem.

So it's just a logistical problem for them to have two anchors. And they tried it at ABC and the idea was that one of them would always be on the road. And, unfortunately, Bob Woodruff was injured in Iraq.

JEFFREY BROWN: Would you care to make a prediction as to whether the storms and all these moves at the morning and evening shows are now over?

KEN AULETTA: No. I mean, I think the interesting thing now, when you talk about personalities, is what is Diane Sawyer's next move? When she signed on six years ago for "Good Morning America," she was going only to do it for six months. Now she seems kind of trapped there.

She can't go to CBS; Katie has that job. She can't go to NBC; that job is taken. She can't go to ABC; that anchor job is taken. So where does Diane Sawyer go? That's one of the interesting questions.

The larger question institutionally is: What happens to the network news division? Will they continue to be driven by those morning shows? And will those morning shows continue to soften up and introduce more and more entertainment values to those news divisions?

JEFFREY BROWN: All right. Ken Auletta, thanks again.

KEN AULETTA: My pleasure.