Shining night
Charlie Gibson is strolling around the set of “Good Morning America,” away from the cameras, when an aide to celebrity animal trainer Jack Hanna scurries over bearing a furry creature clinging to a gnarled stick.
“This may be the last time,” Gibson announces, greeting his old friend Hanna with a bear hug.
It’s a safe bet Gibson won’t be bringing any animals onto the set of ABC’s “World News Tonight,” where he assumed the anchor chair three weeks ago.
That night, he reported on Iraq war planning, a Supreme Court ruling on the death penalty, surging crime rates and a tropical storm threatening Florida – a far more serious diet than the high-calorie smorgasbord that is morning television.
Clearly, Katie Couric’s switch from “Today” to the “CBS Evening News” has generated far more debate, in part because of her status as the first woman taking over one of the Big Three newscasts.
Gibson, who recently became a grandfather, is a comfortable, easygoing figure who filled in so many times for Peter Jennings over the years that it seems perfectly natural to find him as the face of a news division where he has worked for 31 years.
Indeed, the one controversy surrounding Gibson’s anointment is not whether he has the chops for the job, but whether the previous anchor, Elizabeth Vargas, was unfairly shoved aside.
“This place has been rocked twice,” says Gibson, 63, recalling Jennings’ death last August and the Iraqi bomb that wounded Vargas’ former co-anchor, Bob Woodruff, in January.
He says he keeps describing himself as an “old codger” because ABC staffers “just want some sense that calm has descended. It’s not to emphasize that I’m old, which is stupid, but I just want them to know things are OK. Unless I’m hit by a Mack truck, I’m going to be around for a while.”
Gibson, who’s working both the morning and evening shifts before bidding farewell to “Good Morning America” next Wednesday, is accustomed to competing against Couric.
He has spent the last 7 1/2 years, with Diane Sawyer, trying to catch Couric and Matt Lauer in the morning-show wars. He knows that the press will focus on whether his second-place newscast can stave off a challenge from Couric at CBS and gain ground on Brian Williams’ top-rated “NBC Nightly News.”
But Gibson disdains the obsession with Nielsen numbers.
“I have assiduously avoided knowing what the ratings are for shows,” he says. “Some people get paid a lot of money to worry about that stuff.
“If you begin to broadcast or program depending on what a consultant tells you or the ratings indicate, what the hell have you been doing in journalism for 40 years? If you get too immersed in what you think people want to know, based on ratings, you’ve made a tremendous mistake.”
Gibson insists that “World News Tonight” is not so much about him but about the correspondents – the same self-effacing approach that interim CBS anchor Bob Schieffer has taken since succeeding Dan Rather.
“He owes me,” jokes Schieffer, 69, “for proving there’s a future for old guys on TV. Charlie’s just a good guy. He’s been out on a beat and knows how to cover news, and I think he’ll be a stabilizing force and formidable competition.”
Gibson is “very much in the Peter Jennings tradition,” says ABC News President David Westin. “Particularly in time of national emergency or some of the bigger stories we’ve covered, having someone tried and true, who people have experience with over a long period of time, is very reassuring.”
But Westin decided against giving Gibson the anchor job last fall, rejecting his insistence on serving at least three years.
Then Vargas, who soon discovered she was pregnant, found herself working impossible hours after Woodruff’s injury. Last month, Westin handed the job to Gibson, who had no interest in being Vargas’ co-anchor.
“I said to David all the way through that I don’t believe in two anchors sitting at the desk next to each other,” Gibson says. “It never made any sense to me. It never made any sense when Barbara Walters and Harry Reasoner did it or when Connie Chung and Dan Rather did it.”
Gibson, who told Vargas he “felt badly” for what she had gone through, says he had been scheduled to retire next year before getting the new offer.
“I was OK with the idea that ‘Good Morning America’ would be my last job at ABC. … There was never any foot-stomping,” he says.
But to some staffers at the network, it looked as though Vargas was being sidelined by Gibson’s stance, along with sagging ratings and an unplanned pregnancy.
“We didn’t have the natural person to pair with Elizabeth,” says Westin, who chose Gibson after Sawyer took herself out of the running for “World News Tonight.”
He calls Vargas “a consummate professional,” but says the job changed on her because of Woodruff’s injuries.
“I don’t rule out the possibility that Bob and Elizabeth will be co-anchors again,” Westin says.
Colleagues say Gibson is deeply involved in every aspect of “World News.”
“He’s very aggressive in questioning pieces and making sure we cover this or that angle of the story,” says Executive Producer Jon Banner.
But Gibson is the first to say that this is an unaccustomed role for him. For one thing, he has long been collaborating with Sawyer and the “GMA” staff. For another, he received a Quaker education at Washington’s Sidwell Friends School – he still goes to meetings occasionally – and believes in the gradual deliberation that Quakers call “a sense of the meeting.”
In his new role, Gibson makes no secret that he is a meat-and-potatoes man, interested in Washington and foreign news and cool to softer features. He is well aware that viewers have been deserting the once-dominant network newscasts for two decades, but believes they remain a formidable force.
“We’ve lost some audience because people’s choices are so much broader now,” Gibson says. “But I happen to believe there are three national printing presses in television, and now I’ve got one of them.”