Good Evening, America Charles Gibson discusses his transition to ABC's evening chair
Charles Gibson
After
Charles Gibson was named anchor of
ABC World News Tonight, he got a call from a colleague saying, "The tortoise has won the race." Indeed, after all the hype about traveling anchors, webcasts and updates for the West Coast, the network turned to its most experienced and least flashy veteran to head its flagship broadcast. Gibson takes over for
Elizabeth Vargas, who has been flying solo since coanchor
Bob Woodruff sustained a serious head injury on assignment in Iraq. Vargas says she's leaving the program to attend to her pregnancy and to raise her young son. She'll remain coanchor of
20/20. Gibson will be asked to try to reverse the show's declining ratings just as a formidable high-profile competitor,
Katie Couric, takes over the
CBS Evening News. The Biz talked to Gibson about the road ahead.
TVGuide.com: Now that ABC News turned to you — and you look at the success of Bob Schieffer on CBS and Brian Williams on NBC, who are pretty traditional in how they approach the news — do you think evening newscasts really need to be reinvented?
Charles Gibson: Well, I think ABC News President David Westin and I would differ on that. I don't know. I gave a speech not long ago in which I said there's a whole generation of people coming along who are a whole lot more technically savvy than I am. I'm very much a traditionalist. That's my model. I think at some point we're going to have find new ways to engage the audience and new ways to get to people who are not so traditional in the way they watch television. But for the moment we're going back to what you'd call a traditional newscast.
TVGuide.com: There's going to be a bright light shined on the evening-news race when Katie Couric enters the fray in September. How do you feel about that?
Gibson: There is a natural inclination to write about it as Charlie vs. Brian vs. Katie. I really don't see it that way. My hope is that we have a competition between news departments. Essentially, the person in the chair becomes to say that here's the product of ABC News and we think it's better than the product of NBC or CBS, and that's why we want you to watch. To the extent that I can, I want to downplay the personal aspects of the competition — and focus more on the department. The valuable thing that Bob Schieffer did for CBS was he said, "It's not about Dan Rather or me; it's about the correspondents and the content of the newscast every day." He simply said we're going to go back to emphasizing the reportage of the broadcast, and I think he did that. That's what was attractive to me about it. I hope to do the same thing.
TVGuide.com: That's a model you'll try to emulate?
Gibson: I was a guy who, for 15 years trying to get pieces on World News Tonight, lived and died by whether I got on. When I got on, my feeling was, "This damn well better be good because I want to be on tomorrow." That's what I want to do — I want to feature the correspondents and their ability and put the focus on that.
TVGuide.com: Isn't the biggest competition to evening news a lot of people's longer commute times?
Gibson: Partially. We're a world that gets up earlier — to the benefit of the Today show and Good Morning America — and we're a society that comes home later. I have a daughter who's 29 years old, and the computer in her office is always on ABCNews.com. She shifts between that and the New York Times and some entertainment site. She's aware all day long of what's going on. Occasionally, I'll talk to her during the day and she'll ask, "Are you leading with such and such?" Where did that come from? Her complaint about evening news is, "Dad, I know all that."
TVGuide.com: Some people think cable news doesn't spend a lot of time covering the news.
Gibson: When I go to cable, except for [Fox News Channel's] Brit Hume, for whom I have tremendous respect, I go to Headline News. If I'm not in front of the computer screen or the wire services and I want a quick fix, I'll get it faster from Headline News.
TVGuide.com: What's going on with CNN, Fox News and MSNBC that's making you do that?
Gibson: They have too much time to fill. As a result, they chew on ephemera. So you get the car chases and you get the endless discussions of Natalie Holloway, may God rest her soul. I think the poor young woman is gone. If we know or we don't know, it's not going to bring her back to her parents. I've got the details of the Duke-lacrosse-team case. When something happens, let me know what it is. But after endless amounts of talk about it — I don't think I've gone anywhere. I don't think I've learned anything. So I don't watch it.
TVGuide.com: So what's the main challenge ahead for you on World News Tonight?
Gibson: Our problems at the moment are to steady the ship. We've been hit by lightning a couple of times. People here [have been] looking over their shoulders waiting for the other show to drop. What I hope I can provide is getting things back in a mode of stability. Bill Buckley wrote a book a few years ago about sailing, which is called Cruising Speed. It talks about the importance of not living life in a sprint but just being at cruising speed. ABC News is an organization that I hold in enormous regard. We have the best investigative unit. We have the best medical reporter in Tim Johnson. If you're a political junkie, you can read The Note online every day. It's just a question of steadying the ship and showing off the strengths of the news department, which is its reportorial abilities, and it will take care of itself.
TVGuide.com: Have you talked to Elizabeth Vargas since the announcement?
Gibson: She was the first person I went to see Tuesday morning. She was extraordinarily gracious. She's had a very difficult time, because there has been an enormous amount of speculation in the press about what's going to happen. I said that many times in the last couple of weeks, "I wanted to reach out to you and say I know how hard this is, reading things about this." I would have gone to her if I knew what was going on, but I didn't. There were no discussions underway.... I went to talk to her [Tuesday] and talked a lot about the baby and the difficulty of having a child at 43 years old, and we ended with a hug.
TVGuide.com: Have you had a conversation with Bob Woodruff?
Gibson: I called him Tuesday night. I talked mostly to his wife, Lee. I'm going to go out and see him next week. There's a place for him whenever he comes back and whatever role he can come back in. All through my negotiations as we went through every clause there was a discussion about "How does this affect Bob?" This is an expression of infinite patience — Bob has always said in his conversations with David Westin that this is going to be very slow. When he's ready to come back, it's going to be there for him.
TVGuide.com: A lot of people think Diane Sawyer has stayed at Good Morning America as long as she has because you were there.
Gibson: And I stayed so long because of her.
TVGuide.com: So now what happens?
Gibson: I don't know. Diane has said to them she's in for a while longer. Diane and I every once in a while would sit down in her office or my office and say to each other, "Are you up for a few more months?"... One thing that was implicit to me in all of this is if one of us were going to leave or contemplate leaving, we would go to the other and say, "Is that OK with you?" [With the World News Tonight job] I went to her, and she said, "This something you need to do; something you've got to do." That meant more to me than I can tell you. If she didn't want me to do it, I wouldn't have done it.
