Morning America

The bus stops here. And off will step not your average Greyhound passengers, but the well-coifed and -outfitted cast of "Good Morning America" -- Joan Lunden, Charles Gibson and weather forecaster Spencer Christian.They're visiting tomorrow and Monday as ABC's morning show takes its sixth "Bus Tour," this time to explore Maryland's Chesapeake Bay region."The area is important for our history and our culture," says Martin Blair, a "Good Morning America" spokesman. "A lot of people don't even realize how beautiful the Delmarva peninsula is."

Good Morning America's Robin Roberts returned to the anchor desk this morning, five months after taking temporary leave for a bone marrow transplant. Her welcome back included a video message from President Obama. "I keep pinching myself and I realize this is real," Roberts said about her return. Roberts had to get the transplant after doctors diagnosed her with the rare condition myelodysplastic syndromes, or MDS. MDS is a group of disorders that cause the bone marrow to produce an inadequate number of helathy red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets.

It was the dogs that peeved William Tongue, 68, not the other wrinkles in his routine brought by Good Morning America broadcasting from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. yesterday at Annapolis' City Dock. Traffic being routed away from downtown made parking difficult, but Tongue didn't complain about having a longer walk to the Market House where he meets three fellow Annapolis retirees so frequently that many call them The Committee. He even liked the unusual energy in the air produced by the crowd of more than 200 who braved the rain with dolled-up children and poster-board signs in hopes of appearing on national television.

Chris Cuomo is leaving ABC to join CNN, where he will have a "major role in a new CNN morning show," the cable channel announced Tuesday. Cuomo, who has served as co-anchor of "20/20" and chief law and justice correspondent for ABC, will also anchor and report on "major events" for CNN, Jeff Zucker, the channel's new president, said in making the announcement. “Chris is an accomplished anchor who is already an established name in morning television, as well as a widely respected investigative journalist,” Zucker said in a CNN release.

Good morning, Symphony Woods.The television news show "Good Morning America" will tape the holiday lights display "Symphony of Lights" at Columbia's Symphony Woods tonight.The show will air sometime between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. Thursday or Friday.The 4 1/2 -minute piece is a montage of three Christmas "feel good" stories for GMA correspondent Steve Fox's fifth "Annual Christmas Card.""The 'Christmas Card' segments usually feature interesting things going on across the country," said Sandra Aiken, associate producer for "Good Morning America."

ANNAPOLIS - By the dock outside Phillips restaurant, ABC News producers Yael Lavie and Robert Wheelock are standing back to back, separated by a dozen yards and the bleating of cell phones. To the right, Police Sgt. Paul Gibbs is showing Wheelock where it might be possible to stage an enormous tug-of-war game that would span the harbor. To the left, a gaggle of local publicists and tourism representatives are flooding Lavie with suggestions about who should appear on TV - a woman from a Renaissance fair, a man who raises terrapins, an underground band.

People at WBFF are in an all-out sprint to ready the station's new morning news program in time for its March 12 debut. Yesterday, station officials made a strong step in that direction, naming anchors and correspondents. Harold Fisher, until recently an evening anchor on the NBC affiliate in Kansas City, Mo., will be teamed up with Jennifer DesMarais, a reporter and anchor for a cable news channel in Tampa, Fla. The show will be called "Fox 45 Morning News." Nina Edwards, a reporter who has carried out free-lance assignments for the station for the past several months, has been tapped as a full-time correspondent for the morning program.

Out with the new, and in with the old.That's the plan, as of yesterday anyway, at ABC News for reviving its troubled "Good Morning America" show.In a major overhaul, two anchors and an executive producer were dumped yesterday to be replaced on an interim basis starting Jan. 18 by former "GMA" host Charles Gibson and Diane Sawyer, of the "20/20" newsmagazine. Sawyer's return to mornings, where she worked as co-host of "CBS This Morning" from 1981 to 1984, is one of the more surprising turns taken of late by the revolving chairs at the morning show.

For the programmers at WMAR, Channel 2, the decision was simple: Stick with its noon newscast, airing at a time when the audience is stagnant, if not falling, or be the first Baltimore station to expand its morning news program all the way to 10 o'clock. "There's an old baseball adage, hit 'em where they ain't," WMAR news director Peggy Phillip said of Friday's announcement that the station would be dropping its low-rated noon news and adding a third hour to its morning show. "This didn't grow of thinking, 'Let's do something different with our noon news.

Spencer Christian became a television weatherman because it paid significantly better than being a news reporter. Now he hopes his popularity from doing the daily forecasts on ABC's "Good Morning America" for almost seven years might bring him co-host status on the weekday morning program."

In a major and unexpected move, ABC News anchor Charles Gibson announced Wednesday that he will retire at the end of the year, and Diane Sawyer will become the anchor of ABC's "World News." The 66-year-old Gibson said in an e-mail to ABC News staffers Wednesday that he had planned to retire as early as 2007 but that unexpected events in the news division resulted in him staying on. Longtime anchor Peter Jennings died in 2005, and then his replacement, Bob Woodruff, was seriously injured in Iraq in January 2006.

For the programmers at WMAR, Channel 2, the decision was simple: Stick with its noon newscast, airing at a time when the audience is stagnant, if not falling, or be the first Baltimore station to expand its morning news program all the way to 10 o'clock. "There's an old baseball adage, hit 'em where they ain't," WMAR news director Peggy Phillip said of Friday's announcement that the station would be dropping its low-rated noon news and adding a third hour to its morning show. "This didn't grow of thinking, 'Let's do something different with our noon news.

When WJZ-TV's Evening Magazine went off the air at the end of 1990, its popular co-host, Steve Aveson, went on to gain a national audience. He moved to New York and spent four years at ABC News as a Good Morning America and 20/20 correspondent. He also was an anchor for ABC News programs, including World News This Morning, Good Morning America Sunday and Discovery News, a science program. He also had a stint with the broadcast division of The Christian Science Monitor and then returned to a metro market as an anchor at Fox 25 in Boston.

When her children were young, Jenny Lauck flipped on Today or Good Morning America as she brewed her morning coffee and tended her babies. But several years ago, the 34-year-old mother of three stopped watching the morning shows. After getting TiVo, she had no patience to sit through multiple commercial breaks during a live newscast. On top of that, the segments seemed frivolous. "Watching morning television for me is the equivalent of reading People magazine in the dentist's office," said Lauck, who writes for Web sites from her home in Santa Rosa, Calif.

Not noted for their pipes (to say the least), stars of stage and screen nonetheless team with real-life crooners like Smokey Robinson to compete in Celebrity Duets (8 p.m.-10 p.m., WBFF, Channel 45). Network NOVA -- 8 p.m.-9 p.m.,MPT, Channels 22, 67 / Pluto is dead to us. What about Mars? PBS. LAW & ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT -- 9 p.m.-10 p.m., WBAL, Channel 11 / Logan and Barek must contend with a foster mom whose kids are suspected of nasty crimes. NBC. PRIMETIME: THE OUTSIDERS -- 10:01 p.m.-11 p.m., WMAR, Channel 2 / A look at the lives and beliefs of the Amish.

The news that Charles Gibson will be leaving Good Morning America to anchor World News Tonight solves one problem for ABC but raises another. Gibson's departure this week opens a spot at Good Morning America just when the show's producers were hoping to have a solid team in place to battle NBC's powerhouse Today show, which will lose longtime co-anchor Katie Couric after Wednesday. As soon as Gibson's move was announced last week, speculation erupted about the future of the show, a perennial runner-up to Today.

The news that Charles Gibson will be leaving Good Morning America to anchor World News Tonight solves one problem for ABC but raises another. Gibson's departure this week opens a spot at Good Morning America just when the show's producers were hoping to have a solid team in place to battle NBC's powerhouse Today show, which will lose longtime co-anchor Katie Couric after Wednesday. As soon as Gibson's move was announced last week, speculation erupted about the future of the show, a perennial runner-up to Today.

With the release of yesterday's report, the pressure mounts for CBS to find a replacement for longtime anchor Dan Rather. The leading contenders: CBS White House correspondent John Roberts has been a favorite since Rather announced last fall that he would step down in March. Scott Pelley, correspondent for 60 Minutes Wednesday, is thought to be Rather's choice. NBC's Katie Couric, co-anchor of the Today show, has the kind of ratings power the network would like. ABC's Diane Sawyer, co-anchor of Good Morning America and a former 60 Minutes star, still has friends in high places at CBS.

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."

Bill Beutel, 75, the longtime television news anchor and host of the show that became ABC's Good Morning America, died Saturday at his home in Pinehurst, N.C. The cause of death was not disclosed. In 1975, Mr. Beutel hosted AM America, the network's national morning news show. His sign-off, "Good luck and be well," closed WABC's nightly local newscast for more than 30 years. Mr. Beutel, who won several Emmy awards and a Peabody award, began as a radio reporter in his hometown of Cleveland.