ABC News's Charlie Gibson Calls the Shots, Lands on Top

The oldest of the anchors at 64, Gibson is part of the older generation that remains most devoted to the evening news, although he has also been winning in the coveted 25-to-54 age group.

For years now, network executives have been talking about ways to revamp the nightly news, which has been losing audience share for two decades, in an era of instantaneous information. CBS added several new segments when Couric took over but has abandoned the experiment. What really works, it turns out, is an older guy with a decidedly traditional newscast.

ABC's reporters, for their part, love Gibson's self-effacing style.

"Working with Charlie has been so stabilizing and energizing at the same time," says Martha Raddatz, ABC's chief White House correspondent. "He's one of those people who keeps you on your toes without having a hammer over your head. He'll come back with some really pertinent question about what you've just said, and not in an I'm-smarter-than-you way."

Gibson is a talker. Raddatz recalls introducing him to her daughter an hour before air time and watching them chat for so long that she had to remind Gibson the newscast was approaching. "He's warm and fun," she says, "and how can you not love an anchorman who calls you 'Toots'?"

As a Sidwell Friends graduate who worked for Washington's Channel 7 and later covered Capitol Hill for ABC, Gibson has an intuitive feel for Beltway politics. On election night, says George Stephanopoulos, ABC's chief Washington correspondent, "it was our highest pressure moment, and for me it just felt like I was in his office talking politics. He has that quality that makes you feel at home, at ease and on your game." Before they went on the air, Gibson noticed that his colleague's shirt was untucked, "and he ripped me in front of a good 20 people," Stephanopoulos says.

But Gibson has limited coverage of the 2008 presidential race so far. Wednesday's "World News" was the only one of the network broadcasts not to carry a word on the previous night's debate of Republican presidential contenders in South Carolina. "These debates strike me as crazy," he says. "It gives Rudy Giuliani a chance to whip it up on [Congressman] Ron Paul, but who cares? I just think it's too early. I love politics, and I'm not engaged."

While Williams recently spent several days in Iraq, Gibson has no plans for such a trip. "I don't think there's any particular added value in my going," he says.

More than four years into the war, says Gibson, finding new ways to report on the conflict is a challenge. He is uncomfortable with the media emphasis on daily death tolls and often cuts news items on the latest small-scale bombing.

"That becomes white noise, and I really worry about that," Gibson says. "I almost always take that out of there, and I feel guilty when I do take it out. You become inured to it. It washes over you and you don't really hear it."

One month after CBS Radio fired Don Imus, Gibson, who had appeared occasionally on the show, ordered up a piece on whether broadcasters and entertainers were being more careful about their tone.

"I question whether it's really made a difference," he says. "I have some sympathy with Imus in all this -- not in what he said but in the way he got whipsawed. He was always skating on the edge, and he went over the edge. Do I think the offense was serious enough to warrant losing his job? Yes. Do I think he's worse than many other people? No."

Gibson and Banner say they've caught some lucky breaks, such as Woodruff's return to ABC with stories examining veterans' brain injuries, and Sawyer's reports from North Korea, Iran and Syria. Gibson has taken the show to the Middle East, New Orleans, Washington, Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle and Blacksburg, Va., after the Virginia Tech rampage.

He is clearly enjoying himself on the air, as when he wrapped up a report on a group of elderly singers attempting the Who's "My Generation," complete with that band's signature bit of destructive behavior. "They do have to work a bit on breaking those guitars," Gibson said. "It just doesn't seem to come naturally to them."

On the wall of Gibson's office is a baseball jersey signed by Cal Ripken Jr. with the number 19, to signify the number of years he spent at "GMA." Asked how long he will remain an iron man at ABC, Gibson says it depends on his wife, who recently retired as a school administrator, his children and grandchildren, and his energy level.

"Because I didn't ever expect to have this job and I'm of the age I am," he says, "this is my last job. It takes the pressure off you to some extent. The one thing you don't want to do is stay too long.

"I've always had the attitude that the day ABC fires me, I'm going to write a letter and tell them thanks." In light of the recent ratings, "I guess they're not going to fire me."