Co-anchors replace Jennings at ABC
ABC News has chosen the anchor team of Elizabeth Vargas and Bob Woodruff to take the place of Peter Jennings at World News Tonight.
The Canadian-born Jennings died Aug. 7 of lung cancer.
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For the first time, the evening newscast will be broadcast live in three time zones. Vargas and Woodruff will do a version for viewers in the Eastern time zone and new newscasts for the Central and Pacific time zones.
Vargas and Woodruff, along with veteran newsman Charles Gibson, had been the main substitutes since Jennings announced he had cancer in April.
Gibson, co-host of Good Morning America, had been widely favoured for the job, but ABC may have feared losing the popular anchor from its morning program.
"I think ABC decided to take one risk instead of two," Bob Zelnick, a former ABC newsman who is now dean of Boston University's journalism school, told Associated Press.
Woodruff and Vargas are the first co-anchors of a U.S. evening newscast since Dan Rather and Connie Chung briefly worked together at CBS Evening News in the mid-1990s.
Vargas, 43, has been co-anchor of ABC's 20/20, a post she will keep. Woodruff, 44, is trained as a lawyer and covered the Justice Department for ABC, as well as being weekend anchor for World News Tonight.
The introduction of fresh newscasts for each time zone may be an attempt to build ratings on the West Coast, with the potential to cover late-breaking news.
ABC's World News Tonight is the second-ranked evening newscast in the U.S. after NBC's Nightly News.
Woodruff and Vargas will also co-anchor a brief webcast earlier in the day, starting Jan. 2.
ABC, CBS and NBC have all recently lost their major news anchors, who were in their 60s or 70s. NBC's Tom Brokaw was replaced by Brian Williams. CBS is reportedly actively seeking NBC's Katie Couric as the replacement for Dan Rather, who left in March. All of the networks are hoping to appeal to younger viewers with more youthful faces on the anchor desk.