Sawyer’s elevation means that, with Katie Couric at CBS, two of the three leading anchors for the broadcast networks will be women.
Gibson’s comforting presence made him an instant ratings hit at “World News’’ at a time the other networks had much younger anchors. But NBC’s Brian Williams eventually passed him by and has been leading in the ratings for the past year, with “World News’’ a solid second.
“The program is now operating at a very accelerated, but steady, cruising speed and I think it is an opportune time for a transition - both for the broadcast and for me,’’ Gibson said in an e-mail to fellow ABC News staffers. “Life is dynamic; it is not static.’’
Gibson’s biggest impact at ABC has been when he stepped into the breach during times of need. He spent 11 years as cohost of “Good Morning America’’ before stepping down in 1998. But with the program imploding in the ratings, ABC News President David Westin asked him to come back and team with Sawyer. What was envisioned as a stopgap of a few months lasted until mid-2006. After Peter Jennings died of cancer in 2005, Westin replaced him with an anchor team of Woodruff and Elizabeth Vargas. But after Woodruff was seriously hurt in a wartime injury and Vargas became pregnant, Gibson was asked to take over.
“This has not been an easy decision to make,’’ said Gibson said. “This has been my professional home for almost 35 years. And I love this news department, and all who work in it, to the depths of my soul.’’
Sawyer, a 63-year-old newswoman who is a former “60 Minutes’’ correspondent and with Barbara Walters was a competitor for major news interviews in the 1990s, was the obvious choice, Westin said. They’d been talking about the job for a week before she called Tuesday night to tell him that she would do it, he said.
Sawyer will leave a hole at ABC’s “Good Morning America,’’ where she was cohost with Robin Roberts. ABC said it had no immediate announcement about what will happen on that show.
