There has been lots of coverage of the retirement of Charles Gibson from ABC's World News and the move of Diane Sawyer from Good Morning America to replace him. Nearly all of it centering around "what does this mean for the evening news battle", "second female news anchor", etc.
That totally misses the potentially much bigger story of the economic impact of Sawyer's departure from Good Morning America.
ABC has been a reasonably close second to NBC in recent years in the evening news (as recently as 2007 ABC was #1 in the evening news ratings), but in the morning while GMA hasn't seriously challenged the Today show, they've been a respectable second. In both races, CBS trails badly. (We no longer do comprehensive evening news or morning news ratings posts but you can click the links to see press releases with the ratings numbers.)
What the recent coverage has mostly missed is that those morning shows mean *much* more economically to the broadcast networks than the evening news shows. The morning shows target demo group (adults 25-54) viewer numbers are somewhat lower than the evening news shows, but they're three (or four) hours long vs. 30 minutes for the evening news.
The economic impact of any ratings loss at GMA because of the departure of Sawyer are a far bigger issue for ABC that anything that happens to World News.
9/3 Update: The New York Times decided to shine a bit more light on the GMA change.
On Inside Edition they said some possible replacements are George Stepanopolis (sp?), Kelly Ripa, Vanessa Williams, Ann Curry (from Today), Natalie Morales (from Today), and some other chick from Today. Honestly, Ann Curry sounds like the best out of all of those.
OMG! GMA is in trouble if those are their possible replacements. NBC will not give Curry or Morales away.
Vanessa Williams does news? WTF? LOL!
Inside Edition said Vanessa Williams would be good, but is a far choice as she does not do news.
Speaking as a guy who once watched The Huntley/Brinkley report, and seen all these talking heads come and go…is there any reason it has to be:
1. A woman?
2. A journalist?
3. Some mokeys are good at reading copy…
:>
to their credit, Messrs. Stelter and Carter at NYT didn’t completely gloss over the GMA and profitability issues, they devoted a bit of text to it and even quote ABC New President David Westin saying the move leaves a large gap.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/03/business/media/03anchor.html
We have seen what happens when complete unknowns take over GMA as witnessed by the disaster that was wrought when Charlie and Diane left the first time. Can anyone even remember off the top of their head the names of their replacements? And NO peeking at IMDB! No? Didn’t think so!!
I’m guessing we’ll start seeing on-air auditions with guest hosts very shortly. Perhaps this should even be a viewer-voted contest? It makes sense to drum up publicity that way.
Hmm. Come to think of it, Paula Abdul IS looking for a job.
Thanks for posting the NYT link, Robert. I couldn’t find anyone discussing GMA in this move. Attention should be paid to GMA which has been losing viewers for a while. While Robin Roberts has a lovely personality, the show needs someone with serious news experience to bring this program some much needed balance.
I stopped watching GMA regularly when Andrew Cuomo and Sam Roberts joined up. They just seem to want to find the funny in everything, even when reporting on serious stories. The show has become too frivolous, not that the other choices (Today, CBS This Morning) are much better, but Dianne Sawyer handled interviews with intelligence and grace (the Michael Jackson/Lisa Marie interview aside).
Here’s another great article on GMA/Sawyer…apparently GMA makes up HALF of ABC News’ revenues (wow)
> http://www.medialifemagazine.com/artman2/publish/Television_44/Now_the_big_puzzle_Replacing_Sawyer.asp
Elizabeth Vargas, but I think she’s doing 20/20
maggie rodriguez is the best in the morning!