Back in the day, Michael Rosenblum toiled as a producer at CBS News, before leaving the network and making a name for himself as a pioneer in transforming news operations. He helped launch Current TV and New York’s local NY1, and has trained journalists to shoot their own video at The New York Times, the BBC, and networks in Germany, Holland and elsewhere. But he wonders why the recently-revamped CBS Evening News still looks so, you know, unchanged. Comparing the newscast now anchored by Scott Pelley, which included a freshened up set and the return of a world map made famous as part of the set used by CBS legend Walter Cronkite, Rosenblum argues on his blog today that Pelley’s newscast looks nearly identical to the newscast put on by NBC’s John Cameron Swayze–in 1949. “Does it look pretty much the same after 62 years? Isn’t this astonishing? Isn’t this astonishing for a medium that supposedly is on the cutting edge of technology?”

On the heels of ABC’s huge audience–nearly 15 million viewers–for Diane Sawyer‘s exclusive interview with kidnap victim Jaycee Dugard comes word the interview, which was previewed on Sawyer’s ABC World News, boosted ABC’s evening newscast into a first place finish ahead of NBC Nightly News. On Thursday night, World News beat Nightly by 106,000 total viewers (7.656 million vs. 7.550 million), and helped drive World News to its best weekly performance in six weeks.

ABC’s heavily-promoted exclusive interview with kidnap victim Jaycee Dugard was a hit with viewers, attracting an average audience of 14.8 million for the two-hour special Sunday night, according to an early report from Nielsen. The Diane Sawyer interview was Sunday night’s most-popular program, outperforming CBS, NBC and Fox combined in the 9-11 p.m. timeslot. The interview, the first time most Americans had ever heard Dugard speak, was clearly a tune-in event, with the special more than doubling ABC’s lead-in (164%).

In her first interview since the day in 1991 when she was kidnapped, Jaycee Dugard described a life in captivity to ABC’s Diane Sawyer–saying she endured years of abuse and the birth of two children the best way she knew how. “You just do what you have to do to survive.” Dugard, who’s written a book about her life, shared for the first time the details of her abduction–a disappearance that haunted her family and frustrated police (who we learn came very close at times to finding her).

Dugard says she was walking to school when a car rolled up, the driver’s window went down, and her entire life changed:

Diane Sawyer has aired the first clip from her exclusive interview with Jaycee Dugard, the California girl kidnapped while walking to school in June of 1991 and held for 18 years. Dugard, now 31, has written a book about her experience, and she tells her story in a two-hour special on ABC Sunday at 9 p.m. In a preview that aired on ABC World News, Dugard tells Sawyer how she gave birth to a daughter–when she was 14–in the backyard prison where she was held. “Very painful, but then I saw her,” Dugard says. “She was beautiful. I felt like I wasn’t alone anymore.”

Comedian Harry Shearer, who has a fetish of some kind for watching news anchors and reporters as they prepare to go on camera, has posted a clip of ABC World News anchor Diane Sawyer as she prepped to anchor World News from tornado-devastated Joplin, MO. The eight-minute video shows Sawyer standing amid the ruins of a neighborhood–it’s cold, with rain and lightning, Sawyer and her crew sheltered by a small tent as soaked and exhausted ABC News folk set shots, lights, and try to communicate with producers in New York as the network prepares to tell the country a massive, emotional story.

MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski appeared on ABC World News Tuesday in a story about women fighting for equal pay, telling ABC’s Claire Shipman “I got a sense of what all the guys where making on the set, and I looked around one morning and I realized I was the lowest paid on the set and in one case by far.”

Jaycee Dugard, who disappeared as an eleven-year-old girl and was held captive for 18 years, will give her first interview to ABC’s Diane Sawyer in a huge get that ABC is calling “a landmark television event.” Dugard, who was repeatedly abused by her captors and gave birth to two children, recently testified in the trial of Phillip and Nancy Garrido. The couple were convicted of abduction and abuse, with Phillip Dugard sentenced to 431 years to life in prison, and his wife Nancy sentenced to 36 years to life.

As one morning show was announcing a major departure, another was enjoying a homecoming. ABC’s Good Morning America welcomed Lara Spencer back with a clip that featured Spencer trying to find her way to Times Square, including cameos from Desperate Housewives‘ Vanessa Williams, cast members of Grey’s Anatomy, the hosts of The View and Nightline. The clip also includes a hug from World News anchor Diane Sawyer.

Kudos to ABC News’ Jonathan Karl for extracting a number of newsworthy comments from a frank and candid interview he conducted recently with House Speaker John Boehner. Previously we wrote about Boehner’s exasperated challenge to Obama over budget deficit reduction plans, and now we are highlighting Boehner’s seemingly shifting stance on federal subsidies that are going to the very oil corporations who are soon to announce record first quarter profits while gas prices skyrocket. “They ought to pay their fair share,” said Boehner, who previously has been a big supporter of the American oil industry.

If the rampant but rather bland buzz is to be believed, CBS News will tap 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley as the next anchor of the CBS Evening News, replacing the soon-to-depart (and almost certainly daytime-bound) Katie Couric.

By all accounts, Pelley’s a great guy, well-liked at CBS News, and a fine choice to inherit the chair once owned by Walter Cronkite. Picking Pelley would reshuffle the evening news anchor deck, returning it to mostly white guys, with ABC’s Diane Sawyer the only exception. But what if CBS decided on a more diverse choice? Who’s out there? Is there anybody worth a look?

In an interview with Diane Sawyer, President Obama spoke confidently about the mission in Libya, while also taking a moment to make light of some recent criticism he’s received. Obama predicted that Gaddafi knows “the noose is tightening” and that the people of Libya will soon be free from being under his control.

Rush Limbaugh responded to criticism that he was insensitive to Japanese victims by clarifying that he actually “bucked the conventional wisdom” by not making fun of the Japanese people and instead only mocked ABC‘s Diane Sawyer. Distinguishing himself from the likes of Gilbert Gottfried, Rush said all he’s guilty of is “cramming it down the throats of the liberals.”

/a>Three of Germany’s television networks have decided to pull their news crews out of Tokyo out of concern over the risk of radiation. Germany’s ZDF, RTL and N24 have moved their crews from Tokyo to Osaka. The decision was made amid “fears that radioactive waste from the Fukushima reactor could spread to the Japanese capital, some 250 kilometers (155 miles) to the south,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.

In the Japanese port city of Sendai, disaster survivors were sitting in a circle of chairs amid the rubble on Monday, when ABC’s Diane Sawyer walked up with her crew, a translator, and a friendly greeting of konnichi wa. The ABC World News anchor, who’d just flown over the devastated city in a helicopter and visited a school turned into a shelter, is somehow both bigger than life and down to Earth. As she spoke to the group, a man offered Sawyer something to eat. In a country where millions have no food or water, Sawyer refused. The man insisted. Later, on Good Morning America, Sawyer shared the moment and described to viewers the “incredible kindness, and incredible strength” of the people she’d met.

The February finishing order for the network evening newscasts didn’t look much different, with Brian Williams‘ NBC Nightly News taking top honors, followed by Diane Sawyer‘s ABC World News and Katie Couric‘s CBS Evening News finishing last.

But at ABC, news execs point to promising signs World News is making progress. It was the best ratings ABC’s best February performance in three years, and compared to February 2010, World News grew its total audience by one percent, the only network evening news program to grow (CBS was down by 4% and NBC dropped by 10%).

This whole Glee fight’s a bit silly, but we’re onboard. Especially now that it’s clear ABC’s Diane Sawyer is playing to win. It all started, you may know, with a cameo on the hit show by CBS’s Katie Couric. In the scene, Couric’s gets slammed with the line “I hate you, Diane Sawyer.”

Give ABC’s Jonathan Karl some credit. The guy’s creative–and willing to risk the snarky ridicule of those media websites. In an effort to explain the federal budget, Karl got his hands on $100 in pennies, and then proceded to cover a conference room table with them–all divided up according to the spending in the president’s budget. Kinda makes your head hurt just thinking about doing that, right?

The uprising in Egypt forced an airlift of American news anchors to Cairo, but NBC’s Brian Williams outperformed his counterparts in terms of ratings, hitting a six-year high for his NBC Nightly News for the week ending February 5. Nightly averaged more than 11.2 million viewers, the newscast’s best showing since January 2005.

NBC execs point out that the ratings for Nightly were bigger than the viewership of some primetime shows, including ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy (11.182 million viewers) and The Bachelor (9.660 million).

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is coming clean about his regrets, telling ABC World News‘ Diane Sawyerthat he should have stepped down in 2004 after photos of abused Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib were released to the public.

A few things you need to know about ABC’s Diane Sawyer: if New York gets slammed by a sixth consecutive winter storm, she’s not reporting the story from her warm, toasty studio. That’s why she was reporting ABC’s World News tonight from snow covered Central Park. The second thing is this: nothing throws her. Not even a guy on cross country skis who cruises right into the middle of her broadcast.

Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik has been a vocal participant in the finger-pointing aftermath of the Arizona Shooting Tragedy, and in fact was the first to call out the “vitriolic rhetoric” as part of the reason behind the incident. He specifically called out conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, calling him “irresponsible” for the continuing vitriol. During and interview last night with ABC News’ Diane Sawyer, Dupnik doubled down on his critique of Limbaugh, to a surprised Sawyer who gave the Sheriff numerous opportunities to clarify his words.

As the new Congress settles in, ABC World News‘ Diane Sawyer spoke with eight new representatives and two senators-elect about what they have planned. Among the topics discussed: raising the national debt limit as The Continuing Resolution and the vote to raise the debt ceiling loom over Washington and creating a new image of Tea Partiers.

Perhaps you cool kids have noticed that ABC’s World News anchor Diane Sawyer now keeps her iPad on the anchor desk during the evening news. And maybe you saw her using her iPad during that news bonanza interview she did with Janet Napolitano (“24/7, 364″) and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (Um, London, you say?)

Oh, my. The nation’s Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, now admits he knew nothing about the key arrests in London of 12 suspects in a sweeping terror investigation when he sat down to talk about the nation’s anti-terror defenses with ABC’s Diane Sawyer.

In a cringeworthy performance, Sawyer asked Clapper what he knew about possible ties between the London arrests and any potential threat on the U.S. homeland. Clapper, who sat silent and obviously confused by the question, ultimately told Sawyer he didn’t even know as much about the arrests as anybody who’d watched Good Morning America that day.