Two Women to host GMA...
 

I'm surprized nobody has posted this, but ABC has made a little bit of history by announcing that Diane Sawyer and Robin Roberts will the the co-anchors of Good Morning America.

This is a huge break from the "tratidional" male/female anchor teams.

It's a great time for women on the national network news scene with this announcement following Katie Couric's move to the CBS Evening News.

I'll be interested to see how it works out. GMA is my morning program of choice. I love Diane Sawyer, but Robin may be right behind Katie as my least favorite.

It's going to be a very interesting thing to watch. A lot of TV bards think that a show like GMA needs "balanced" perspective -- meaning from a mixed gender team. The news reader and weatherman will still be men -- but they play a substantially smaller role in the overall content of the show.

I met Robin Roberts once at the Children's Miracle Network Telethon, just walking around outside the stage, and she was very nice and unaffected -- very pleasant. I almost never have the chance to watch the morning shows anymore, so I don't know how to comment on how this situation is going to work

I had the same interaction - I talked to her a few times when she was at ESPN, and she was always very friendly and pleasant.

She also was a great basketball player in college.

I think Robin is a good broadcaster, but I think she is better suited to sports. I just don't think she's that great doing real (or magazine) style news. I guess I should have been more clear in my original post.

Also DA, I believe that the weather person is going to be a woman. Marysol Castro is just out on maternity leave (unless they decide to replace her with a male).

That may well be. I read on one of the broadcasting BB's that the News and Weather people would be men -- but that may have been speculation, or perhaps even a mistake.

I haven't seen Robin on GMA, so I don't know how she does in non-sports situations.

I thought she was pretty good in her former sports life.

ETA, that I do find this decision to be pretty interesting -- perhaps a potentially dangerous experiment with all of the changes in TODAY and GMA. Everyone has an opinion on the show hosts -- although it seems to me that people are much harder on the woman hosts than the men. That was never more clear than when it was announced that Katie Couric would move to CBS. The sometimes vitriolic comments about her on one side, and the good comments from the other were pretty strong.

What I have learned over many years in broadcasting is that it takes a VERY special person to be able to fit into a position where the shifts from one area of content to another is so obvious and demanding. Many look at the "Show Biz" interviews and conclude that the anchor does all fluff. On the other hand, these same people interview hard news types, and are often then taken to task for being pushy, arrogant or agressive. The fact is that almost all of the on-air folks on these shows have a pretty strong background in hard news or sports reporting. The morning shows are a different beast -- watched by a different audience than the evening news broadcasts. I think they take a very unique talent for which we often don't give them credit. It's difficult to make a transition from one show type to another, but it can be done. Look at Tom Brokaw. Look at Charles Gibson -- nobody I know is saying that he can't handle World News Tonight on moving from GMA.

Maybe we're harder on the women. Is it that difficult for an intelligent, attractive woman to be taken seriously? Would we look at if differently if they were the body equivilent of Al Roker with gray hair and a face resembling Walter Cronkite?

I'm going to be very interested in the GMA/TODAY race as well as what happens in the evening network news ratings.

You're probably going to hate this, but I'll say it anyway...

Part of the issue with Katie is that it's been very obvious which side of the aisle she is on politically. It had an effect on her interviews at the Today show; that was excusable because of the format. Now that she's heading back to "hard news," she's going to have to try harder to work the middle.

Part of it is also probably a personality thing. I know Katie started out doing "hard news," but her personality was very bubbly and light-hearted (most of the time) on the Today show. For a lot of people, that's what they know of Katie, and that's why they're not thrilled for her new job.

No, that's a fair opinion.

I don't totally agree, but that's OK.

I never had the opportunity to meet Katie, but was at a Radio-TV News Directors Association meeting once that she attended (probably spoke there) and overheard her talking to someone in the hall as I passed and saying something like, "If one more person calls me 'perky,' I'll kill them."

Professionalism is one thing, and we can argue about hers or anyone elses ad naseum, but it's harder to change your looks and personality.

In any event, CBS knows all about her, so I'm sure all of the "baggage," if that's what it is was taken into account.

I am a big fan of GMA and have seen Robin with DA in the morning and she does a really good job of holding her own.

At first, there may have been a slight awkwardness, but especially after the Hurricanes (which affected her hometown)...wow, I think she has shown that she is just as capable of true "hard news" reporting.