World News‘ Jon Banner: We’re “Not In This Business To Be In 2nd Place”

With Diane Sawyer‘s “smooth” debut last night as anchor of ABC’s World News, the transitions taking place at the network are beginning to come to light.

Executive Producer Jon Banner says it was a “solid” start – and talked to Mediaite about ratings, how Sawyer is different from Charlie Gibson and more.

“I think that was a solid start for us,” Banner tells Mediaite today. “It played to a lot of Diane’s strengths, allowed her to show some of her desires of what she wants to do with the program and also showed her strengths in terms of interviewing…More generally her energy and enthusiasm showed quite nicely in the first program.”

Banner pointed to one way he sees a difference between the anchor he used to produce. “There are some changes in the energy of the broadcast, in the tone of the broadcast, which allowed Diane to show her desires of where to take the program,” he says, although he does not the similarities as well: “Both brought incredible intellect and the journalism standards established over their career are self-evident.”

According to the fast affiliates data, which is not official, the show was up a bit from its season-to-date average, with an 8 million total viewers average season-to-date and 8.41 last night. Banner says the ratings are important for the transition. “I think what would be positive is if we all make progress based on our previous ratings,” he says of his program and Good Morning America. “We all know in the morning and evening we have a lot of work to do. We’re working especially hard during a time when people are traditionally slowing down…This is a marathon, and we intend to last it out. None of us are in this business to be in second place.”

There are very evident changes to the program since Sawyer took over, explained in a post on the World Newser blog by Banner. Sawyer will be doing regular “The Conversation” segments that will provide a looser, more personal pre-show web segment several times a week. Says Banner:

I think one of things we’ve tried to do in this incarnation, more so than the previous, is to match the on-air and online mission. “The Conversation” is born out of that in several ways. It’s digging deep into a single subject and is much more conversational, which plays to her strength, and what the broadcast will do more of. It allows us to hopefully be much more interactive with our audience in the long run.

>>> NEXT PAGE: Banner responds to Stanley, and a look at “The Conversation”.