ABC - ABC NEWS CHIEF SURPRISED BY GIBSON ASCENDANCY

ABC News President David Westin has acknowledged that when Katie Couric took over as anchor of The CBS Evening News at about the same time that Charles Gibson took over the reins of ABC's World News, he tried to prepare his news staff for at least a temporary drop in ratings. "I said, 'We will suffer because of this [Couric's debut], our ratings will go down. Be prepared for several months of this.' I was wrong," Westin told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In fact, the opposite occurred. Gibson, the newspaper observed, "finds himself headlining one of the more intriguing comeback stories going," as his program has taken the lead in the evening news competition. Professor Robert Thompson, who comments on popular culture at Syracuse University, noted that at first all eyes were on Couric. "Then before you knew it, ABC seemed to inhabit this territory that network news seems completely unable to conquer, which is 'America's newscast.'"

23/03/2007