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

We asked Banner for his response what Alessandra Stanley wrote today about the show in the New York Times (“With Ms. Sawyer’s arrival, the three network anchors are evenly matched in looks and take-charge personality.”)

“There’s a lot more than looks that go into an evening newscast,” says Banner. “We have a lot of people who work for this program that put their lives at risk every day in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It’s a serious business.”

There are other changes coming, in addition to “The Conversation.” There’s now a World News Twitter feed, started on Sunday. And TVNewser reports there’s a new voice to introduce the broadcast – Dirty Jobs host Mike Rowe.

And as The Conversation becomes part of the new plan, the daily World News Webcast, a shorter 3pmET version of the show, goes away. “This is somewhat of a big change for us in terms of putting the webcast on hiatus, but we think we can reach more viewers with a question of the day,” says Banner. “It’s a logical step to try to match the online mission with the on-air mission in a way that’s been absent the last couple years.”

Also – the entire broadcast can be found on ABCNews.com and iTunes, as can “The Conversation.”

Will the new web strategy produce results where it still really matters, in the Nielsen ratings? We’ll see. And the style of Sawyer can only truly be seen after a few weeks, or even months, and not just one day. But it is no doubt a different landscape now – and the competition for evening news supremacy has become a focus once again.

Here are the first two “conversations”:

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