For Better or Werts : TV Worth Watching

NEWS NEWS: Diane Sawyer steps up

The early bird gets the anchor slot.

Charles Gibson, Katie Couric, Tom Brokaw and Barbara Walters way back when, and now Diane Sawyer -- all morning-show hosts who made the leap to anchoring their networks' evening newscasts.

Sawyer takes over ABC World News in January, when Gibson retires as just announced by ABC.

So it's interesting to see that career path becoming almost de rigeuer now. Evening anchors used to come out of the reporting ranks. Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Bernard Shaw and Brian Williams all worked the White House or foreign correspondent job first. Now anchors are chosen less for their news chops -- no offense, Diane, we know you've got the goods -- than for their "presentation" polish.

Walter Cronkite would never get the gig today.

1 Comments

Brenda said:

Diane Sawyer worked in the Nixon White House and covered the State Department. Katie Couric covered the Pentagon. That seems pretty solid. Beyond that, they've both done hundreds of hours of interviews on every subject you can imagine. And on top of it, Diane Sawyer is 63 -- a fabulous looking 63 -- but nonetheless 63. That is more encouraging than anything I have heard today.

September 2, 2009 5:00 PM

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Diane Werts has been glued to the tube since she can remember, growing up in a household where the TV came on first thing in the morning and stayed on till bedtime and beyond. She worked for the USA Film Festival, then for The Dallas Morning News writing about everything from Shakespeare to macrame art to rock music (and has the hearing loss to prove it). She moved to New York's Newsday to edit their glossy TV magazine, then returned to writing about television, specializing in its stranger permutations. She's a past president of the Television Critics Association.

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