Charles Gibson will step down as news anchor on ABC television’s “World News” and be replaced by Diane Sawyer beginning in January, ABC News said on Wednesday.
Gibson has served as the news program host since May 2006 and will retire after a 40-year career in television in which he has moderated presidential debates and reported from around the world.
Sawyer, most recently a host of ABC’s “Good Morning America Show,” was a pioneer among women in American broadcast television news, becoming the first woman to co-anchor the top-rated “60 Minutes” news magazine show on CBS before joining ABC News in 1989.
Since the advent of cable and satellite television, national broadcast news has lost much of the formidable influence it once had over U.S. politics and current affairs, but the network news anchor positions are still viewed as benchmarks for the profession.
