Abc

An ABC Primetime news report last night criticized the lack of security at a University of Maryland building housing a nuclear reactor. School officials called the report misleading. ABC investigated security at 25 college nuclear reactors by sending a team of students into the buildings, where the students discovered unstaffed guard booths, unlocked doors and a guard who was apparently asleep, the network said. At College Park, the network's team went to the Chemical and Nuclear Engineering Building, where a nuclear reactor used for training and research is located.

ABC News is standing by its report that House Speaker Dennis Hastert is "in the mix" of an FBI probe of corruption in Congress, despite denials from the Justice Department and Hastert himself. The network reported Wednesday that Hastert, an Illinois Republican, was part of an investigation of activities involving former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who pleaded guilty in January to corruption charges. Hastert called ABC's report libelous and defamatory, and demanded a retraction. Yesterday, ABC News spokesman Jeffrey W. Schneider told The Sun that the network had "checked and checked with our sources, who assure us that our report is accurate."

Still reeling from the death of anchorman Peter Jennings and the loss since last year of nearly a million viewers, ABC will aim the network's flagship World News Tonight in a new direction. Beginning Monday, Good Morning America co-host Charles Gibson will be at the helm and current co-anchor Elizabeth Vargas will leave the evening newscast. ABC's moves, announced yesterday, signal an acute departure from the course initially set by News President David Westin, who in December named Vargas, 43, and Bob Woodruff, 44, as Jennings' successors, dubbing them co-anchors "for the digital age."

The last time we, the jackals of the press, visited with ABC's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, we were busy shoveling dirt on the corpse. It was a beautiful day in June 2002, and this seemed like the right thing to do because in a few hours, the final verdict -- death by cancellation -- was to be rendered. After 363 shows, $76,821,000 in winnings, Regis Philbin's signature monochromatic look and a memorable 2 1/2 -year prime-time run that sent a hapless network soaring through the clouds and then crashing down onto the rocks, ABC's Millionaire was kaput.

In Boomer Esiason's mind, there are still two or three years of football left in his body, and if Cincinnati Bengals president Mike Brown had agreed, Esiason might be the Bengals' starting quarterback next season.Instead, Esiason will join Al Michaels and Dan Dierdorf in ABC's broadcast booth for "Monday Night Football," a move the network formally announced yesterday after word of the move leaked out Friday.Esiason, 36, who had a strong run at the end of the season in his second stint with the Bengals, said that the decision to leave football was "agonizing," but one that had to be made, given the considerable amount of interest he attracted from both ABC and CBS."

Last night in a dramatic address to viewers at the end of World News Tonight, ABC anchorman Peter Jennings told viewers in a wavering and gravelly voice that he has lung cancer. "Finally this evening, a brief note about change," the 66-year-old newscaster began. "Some of you have noticed the last several days that I was not covering the pope. ... I have learned in the last couple of days that I have lung cancer. Yes, I was a smoker until about 20 years ago, and I was weak and I smoked over 9/11.

For years the Alliance for a Better Columbia has been the Columbia Council's most keen watchdog and critic. Members of this citizens group routinely testify before the council, presenting myriad pleas: Drop the Columbia Association's annual charge rate, balance the budget and distribute more information to the community. In the spirit of Columbia's history of grass-roots activism, the alliance, known as ABC, has acquired a reputation of challenging the views of the council majority and homeowners association staff.

CBS News, which unlike NBC has never been able to find a home on cable TV, is going broadband with a 24-hour digital online news network, CBS News President Andrew Heyward announced yesterday. The move is the first step in taking CBS News from a traditional television and radio network news division to a video-on-demand news service providing information online for viewers when they want it. The new approach, which will also include a blog called "Public Eye," can only improve the network's fortunes, as CBS News trails NBC and ABC in virtually all audience categories.

For all the mischief they stirred up this winter, ABC officials sure don't seem to have accomplished all that much. On Monday, late-night impresario David Letterman re-upped for another stint working for the people he dismisses as "morons" on the air - executives at CBS - while turning down a similar offer from ABC and its corporate owners at Disney. Nightline anchor Ted Koppel, whose show would have been displaced by Letterman, replied that the network had inflicted "collateral damage" on both Nightline and ABC News.

As a glimpse into the future, the ABC Web site's new offering of fresh TV episodes, free of charge, is both tantalizing and maddening. It's tantalizing because it's high-level television, plus Commander in Chief, without the bother of television. It's maddening because ABC.com's execution of the concept isn't nearly so sparkly and high-end as it first appears. The most pressing issue: The episodes, in my trial Monday, the experiment's first day, loaded slowly or not at all and could not be induced to play all the way through.