Diane Sawyer’s Future Competition Speaks Out

by Steve Krakauer | 2:31 pm, September 2nd, 2009

» 4 comments

couric_9-2 We know who will be the new anchor on ABC starting January 2010 – Diane Sawyer.

So what does her future competition think of the move? Mediaite has statements from CBS’ Katie Couric and NBC’s Brian Williams:

Couric got out in front, with a statement emailed to Mediaite from her publicist. With a fellow female anchor joining the ranks, Couric will likely be a focus of many of the Sawyer stories that come up over the course of the next few months:

Ever since my days as a desk assistant at ABC News, I’ve always admired Charlie’s work. He’s a talented reporter, a gifted communicator, and a wonderful person. I wish him all the best.

Diane is one of the hardest-working people I know and this new assignment is the latest achievement in an already accomplished and illustrious career. And as I did, I’m sure she’ll quickly find that she doesn’t miss that early morning alarm clock.

We also asked NBC for a statement from Williams – who is currently out in California covering the wildfires. This is what he said:

I would love to say that ABC’s loss is NBC’s gain, but then they went and appointed Diane Sawyer to replace Charlie Gibson. That doesn’t lessen the competition one bit.

Charlie is a pro, and he’s been the most able competition anyone could ask for. Diane is no different – a legendary name in our business for decades – and now we’ll have to work every bit as hard every day to put on the best newscast possible. This is more evidence that the competition has never been more robust among the three network evening newscasts, and it keeps us all sharp, aggressive and on our toes. Congratulations to Charlie, congratulations to Diane, and Katie and I will continue to work hard every day.

Very gracious, as expected. Let’s see what happens in February 2010 when they’re competing against each other during sweeps.

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Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson, Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric

m

Interesting to have two networks with women doing the nightly news.
libra blue

So they are replacing one used up stale old guy with one used up stale old woman. Is this really progress?
ChrisNH

‘Glasses’ Gibson probably figured he couldn’t toe the Obama line any more in 2010 without looking like an inept fool, so he waved the white towel. The approval ratings are falling for these media people, too.
sameasiteneverwas

I do think the CBS Evening News today is very different to the Evening News when Couric debuted (though I don’t think the 2006 version was bad). Katie’s confident now as the anchor and the newscast has the best reporting and news content everynight compare to her rivals. I hope you’ll post this message of mine so that folks at CBS News will be able to read reasons why CBS Evening News is lasted on 3rd position on the rating race.

Here are some:

1. CBS don’t invest in state of the art machineries, in fact they’re the only network during the election that used mini touchscreens that was used during the early 2000/Rather era.

2. The Evening News set isn’t actually good. They should atleast redesign the set and come up with something new to send a message that the newscast is different to when it debuted in 2006.

3. The James Horner theme music is great.. but they should atleast use an aggresive version of the theme music.

4. The graphics should be change too… they used it for 2 years now… people want new look on a newscast atleast per year.. or twice per 3 years…