By FRAZIER MOORE

It would be interesting to know what Andy Rooney would say now about the great beyond.

But if there’s a hereafter for the once lovably cantankerous commentator on CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” he, even as a new arrival, would already have some pointed reactions — and some bones to pick.

Sure, it’s Paradise. But who can sleep with all that harp-playing? Maybe he’s still miffed about the long line at the Pearly Gates. And, though he was never a fashion plate, he might have a beef with wearing white after Labor Day.

That was Rooney’s style during his 92-year life and remarkable career. He shrewdly observed the world he shared with the rest of us, and then gave voice to the everyday vexations and conundrums that afflict us all.

“I probably haven’t said anything here that you didn’t already know or have already thought,” he declared in his final “60 Minutes” essay — his 1097th — on Oct. 2, 2011. “That’s what a writer does.”

Former ’60 Minutes’ commentator Andy Rooney dies | Online guestbook: Share your condolences

Despite his decades as a “60 Minutes” fixture, Rooney was a writer, not a talking head. Words, not vamping for the camera, were his stock in trade since his first “60 Minutes” essay in 1978, just as words were his business for more than 30 years before that.

Rooney, who died Friday, had been a champion of words on TV ever since he joined CBS in 1949 as a writer for the red-hot “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts.” Within a few years he was also writing for such CBS News public-affairs such as “The Twentieth Century” and “Calendar.”

A World War II veteran who reported for the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, he came from an ink-on-dead-trees brand of journalism that he never renounced. (During his CBS career, he had a syndicated newspaper column and published 16 books.) So it was logical that he would join “60 Minutes” with its inception in 1968. After all, the legendary creator of “60 Minutes,” Don Hewitt, is well remembered for insisting that, even on the visual medium of TV, the words should come first and the pictures follow. A decade later, Rooney was 59. At an age when many people might be pondering retirement, he took his seat before the camera to deliver his first “60 Minutes” essay.

Beetle-browed and rumpled, he wasn’t telegenic by conventional standards. But nobody minded, or even noticed. Viewers listened to his words and his wry delivery, and he caught on.

One reason is clear: He tapped into experiences common to his audience.

In his opinion pieces, he drew from a wellspring of random nuisances and absurdities, noting how life often doesn’t add up, especially in the modern day. This nettled him mightily, and his essays gave us license to be irked, too, as we tapped into our own inner fuddy-duddy.

One Sunday, for example, Rooney focused on motion-picture credits. There are too many of them. They take too long. Who cares, anyway? Things were better when he was a kid, without all those names cluttering the screen and wasting everybody’s time.

Another week, he marveled that, “If I’m so average American, how come I’ve never heard of most of the musical groups” — such as Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, Usher — “that millions of other Americans apparently are listening to?”

He raised topics on which we all could readily agree: how packages misleadingly are bigger than the volume of product they contain, and how “computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don’t need to be done.” Amen!

He validated things in his own wry style that everybody knows: Like, how air travel stinks and how “nothing in fine print is ever good news.”

He took notably bold stands on certain major issues. He was one of television’s few voices to strongly oppose the war in Iraq when it began.

But there were easy targets, too. “There are a lot of know-nothing boobs who don’t appreciate the modern art being put up in public places in all our cities,” he declared peevishly one week. “I know this is true, because I’m one of those know-nothing boobs.”

Then, occasionally, he strayed into areas beyond his understanding. For example, he dismissed Kurt Cobain’s 1994 suicide as, in effect, a selfish act. What did Cobain know about suffering? The 27-year-old rock star hadn’t suffered through a war or the Depression! (The next week, he apologized on the air.)

He could play rough.

“One of my major shortcomings — I’m vindictive,” he pleasantly acknowledged in a 1998 interview with The Associated Press. “I don’t know why that is. Even in petty things in my life I tend to strike back. It’s a lot more pleasurable a sensation than feeling threatened.”

He summed up: “There’s no question I have a negative streak, which has served me well.”

Indeed. But if Rooney sometimes championed a get-off-my-lawn brand of crankiness, there was usually a twinkle in his eye and a “we’re-in-this-together” tone to his writing that gave comfort to his flock.

“I’ve done a lot of complaining here,” he acknowledged in his farewell commentary, and voiced a parting complaint: He doesn’t like being famous, nor does he like being bothered by fans. “I walk down the street now or go to a football game and people shout, ‘Hey, Andy!’ And I hate that.” No autographs, please.

“But of all the things I’ve complained about, I can’t complain about my life.” Without even being told, his fans always knew that beneath Rooney’s grumbling was gratitude for all the good things — his family, his job, his country — that life had given him. His fans identified with that, too.

Oh, sure, there were viewers who grew weary of his act, of his comments on the fleeting and the mundane (which, in a popular parody of Rooney, would begin as “Didja ever notice …?” — a phrase he insisted he had never used). Detractors thought he had long outstayed his welcome.

Even so, as he delivered his final essay — which he titled “My Lucky Life” — he spoke for much of the “60 Minutes” audience when he said, “This is a moment I have dreaded. I wish I could do this forever. I can’t though.”

Then he insisted he wasn’t retiring: “Writers don’t retire and I’ll always be a writer.”

For Rooney, it all came down to the writing, the words: simple, succinct, sometimes pungent, sometimes funny. And not many of them in a single serving.

His voice is stilled now, but never fear: If there are computers in heaven doing needless tasks, or forms containing fine print, or “the dullest” Olympic sport of curling, odds are Rooney is writing a cantankerous response.

The Nielsen Co. said Pelley’s third-place newscast reached an average of 5.55 million viewers during his first five weeks in the anchor chair. That’s up 7 percent over the same five weeks in 2010 when Katie Couric was the anchor.

During the same time, Brian Williams’ “Nightly News” on NBC averaged 7.88 million people watching each night, and ABC’s “World News” with Diane Sawyer had 7.12 million. For each, that’s up 5 percent from 2010.

The network evening news — a format that has seen multiple death sentences over the years — has picked up more than a million viewers collectively since last year.

ABC spokeswoman Julie Townsend tells The Associated Press that the Utah woman who was kidnapped, raped and held captive at age 14 by a Salt Lake City street preacher can provide viewers with a unique perspective on such cases.

Townsend says the deal with the now 23-year-old Smart has been in the works for some time.

She says Smart could be on the air within the next few weeks.

Smart spokesman Chris Thomas says the Brigham Young University music student wants to use the media position to create awareness about cases involving missing children.

In May, Brian David Mitchell was sentenced to life without parole in federal prison for Smart’s 2002 abduction.

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After 14 years as the understudy, Ann Curry is in the big chair now at NBC’s “Today” show.

She had her first day Thursday as co-anchor with Matt Lauer on television’s top-rated morning show. Her predecessor, Meredith Vieira, had an on-air going-away party Wednesday.

Curry has been on the show since 1997 as the regular newsreader, and has filled in as co-host dozens of times.

She referred to that in her opening, saying, “I’m Ann Curry, in for I guess nobody this morning — me, myself and I. It’s nice to be able to say that, isn’t it?”

Lauer welcomed her, saying she had already been on the show so long that “it’s a little bit like a member of the family moving to a new seat at the table.”

The network and Beck’s company, Mercury Radio Arts, announced the departure on Wednesday. Fox and the company said they will work together to create other projects for Fox News television and digital.

Beck became a sensation almost immediately after jumping from HLN to Fox for an afternoon program. Lately his viewership has declined. He had faced an advertiser boycott that limited the amount of companies that wanted to be a part of his show after saying President Barack Obama had a “deep-seated hatred for white people.”

Beck said that he “cannot repay (Fox News chief) Roger (Ailes) for the lessons I’ve learned and will continue to learn from him and I look forward to starting this new phase of our partnership.”

Laurel Sauer records part of her On Assignment segment during the WPBF Channel 25 news. (Richard Graulich/The Palm Beach Post)

Laurel Sauer arrives at a Juno Beach park for an interview and shakes a beach towel out of her bag.

And begins field producing the conversation.

"Here. Sit on this so you won’t ruin those white jeans. And let’s sit over here, out of the sun."

Habits acquired during 28 years of local TV news are hard to kick.

Nor has Sauer lost the folksy, personal touch that made her the most recognizable female face in local TV for nearly three decades.

"I brought you this. It’s warm out today," she says, handing over a chilled water bottle fished from her bag.

Laurel Sauer with her husband, Davis de Montluzin, and their children, Jillian, a freshman at the University of Florida, and Brooks, a senior at Palm Beach Gardens High School.

She settles on the gazebo’s wooden bench and turns on that familiar, bright-eyed grin.

"This is my relaxation," says Sauer, gazing out at the ocean. "Give me a beach chair, my thermos and a magazine, and I’m happy."

In person, Sauer is less high-contrast than she appears on the air, but twice as bubbly. Instead of the bright, jewel-toned blazers she favors on TV, she’s wearing a navy-and-white striped T-shirt. Her hair seems darker than the glittering blonde it appears under TV lights.

In conversation, she’s like your fast-talking girlfriend, the bossy, multi-tasking one who’s more organized than anyone else, whose conversation veers from her kids to her successful struggle to lose 15 pounds to worries that her neck looks droopy.

"I could use some of this," she says, pulling up the skin of her neck to mimic plastic surgery. She says she’s never had Botox or facial fillers. "I’m not against it," she says with a laugh, "but I’m still thinking."

Attempting a comeback

What mid-life woman hasn’t had these conversations?

But then, most aren’t attempting a comeback in local TV news.

At 55, Sauer is re-entering an industry where young and fresh usually trump older and experienced, especially among women broadcasters in the new high-definition world.

She has a temporary, part-time job doing special reports on WPBF-Channel 25 during this month’s ratings period, as she did during the November’s ratings. Called Laurel Sauer: On Assignment, the reports air once a week on the 11 p.m. newscast.

"It’s been fun. I get my hands back in, certainly show my face back on TV," she said.

"It’s a brilliant move by 25," said Tim Malloy, a former investigative reporter at WPTV-Channel 5, now journalism teacher at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. "She’s one of the biggest figures you could have in local TV."

Quipped her long-time co-anchor at Channel 5, now competitor, Jim Sackett, "I wish her luck, just not too much."

A sad ending

The reporting job is Sauer’s first time on the air since September 2008 when Channel 5, the market’s top-rated station, refused to renew her contract after 20 years as the station’s lead female anchor. It’s a loss that rankles still.

"I never got a chance to say good-bye on the air," she said. "It was a very sad ending to what I thought was a very good career and something I was good at."

It also hurt, she said, that none of her former Channel 5 colleagues called after she was shown the door. Not even Sackett, with whom she shared an anchor desk for two decades.

"I guess that’s true," said Sackett. "We were professionals together but we didn’t socialize. I think it was remiss of me not to (call)."

The doyenne of local TV news is without a job at a time when stations’ budget cuts are forcing reporters to shoot and edit their own stories. Other female anchors in their 50s with large salaries have retired (Chandra Bill) or lost jobs in station shake-ups (Claudia Shea.)

Roxanne Stein at Channel 5 remains the only female anchor in this market over the 50-year mark.

"The trend is to put younger people on the air," said Malloy.

While neither Sauer nor Channel 5 can talk about the reasons behind her firing ­- lawyers and a confidentiality agreement were involved – she feels she was forced too soon out of a business she loves.

"I feel like I still have enough to offer. I’m a good communicator, certainly people know me and recognize me," Sauer said.

Kyle Grimes, Channel 25′s news director, agrees.

"We saw somebody who’d built relationships with viewers," said Grimes, who wanted to "re-introduce" Sauer to local viewers in hopes of a ratings boost. He won’t say whether it’s been successful. "Her understanding of the market brings unique story ideas because she’s involved with her community."

Grimes cites Sauer’s November post-prison interview with former Palm Beach County Commissioner Warren Newell as an example, saying it was "first rate and done very well."

For Sauer, persuading Newell to discuss the toll his going to prison for honest services fraud took on his family was proof experience is more valuable than a fresh face.

"I got that exclusive interview that everybody wanted," she said. "I still have the contacts, I still have the moxie to go out and get these interviews. I don’t want to sit on the sidelines."

Uncertain future

But she doesn’t know if her short-term contract will extend beyond the end of this month.

"If this works into full time, that’s great," said Sauer.

Sauer’s local career began in 1980 at Channel 12, where she anchored for eight years before being demoted. She won a breach-of-contract lawsuit, then moved to top-rated Channel 5, where she and Sackett reigned over local TV news for 20 years.

Her job at Channel 25 gives her an unusual local market trifecta.

But former colleagues say Sauer may need to face some very hard facts.

"Very few people go 28 years," said Dean Tendrich, a former weather caster on Channel 5, who has known Sauer since 1985. Now working in his family’s restaurant business, Tendrich picked his words carefully, after explaining he has a potential business deal with Channel 5 in the works.

"There is a run, a shelf life. I’ve explained to her that there are plenty of other things she can do to benefit the community, but she loves television. She has a passion for it."

Malloy said, "A TV job is like a beloved pet. It’s wonderful when you have it, you don’t have it too long and it always ends badly."

Being pulled off the air is an adjustment for someone accustomed to the limelight, said Reg Miller, Sauer’s former co-anchor at Channel 12, who knows from experience. Miller is now the general manager of a Palm Beach Gardens law firm.

"You go through a recovery," said Miller. "It’s not like somebody who worked at a retail store and has 15,000 other retail stores from which to choose."

Miller praised Sauer’s credibility and integrity, as did Sackett.

"She was able to reach out and touch the viewers," said Sackett. "She got married, had her children here. It was a family kind of atmosphere for the viewers."

Baseball mom

And family is where Sauer retreated after losing her job. She’s been married to Davis de Montluzin, a Merrill Lynch investment broker, since 1984.

Sauer became a stay-at-home mom to Jillian, now a freshman at Sauer’s cherished alma mater, the University of Florida, and son, Brooks, a senior and pitcher on Palm Beach Gardens High School’s baseball team.

Sauer attends all his games, something that was impossible with her TV schedule.

"So many times with this job, you sacrifice a lot of time with your kids," she said.

But with two college educations to finance, Sauer says she needs to work.

If she’s not offered another full-time TV job, she’ll look for something "in marketing for a company that wants to use my name value and my brand."

Either way, Laurel Sauer will still be around.

The network on Tuesday also named David Rhodes as CBS News president.

In the newly created position of CBS News chairman, Fager will report to CBS boss Leslie Moonves and guide the overall editorial direction of CBS News broadcasts.

As president, Rhodes will report to Fager and run the operations of CBS News on a day-to-day basis. Rhodes most recently was the head of U.S. Television operations for Bloomberg.

Fager and Rhodes succeed Sean McManus, whom the network has named to the newly created position of chairman of CBS Sports.

Fager will continue at “60 Minutes,” where he has been executive producer since 2004.

Current announced Tuesday that Olbermann will host a nightly prime-time news and commentary show. His program will begin later this year.

The network said Olbermann will also serve as chief news officer and have an equity stake in Current Media.

The outspoken Olbermann had been at MSNBC since 2003, where his nightly “Countdown” was the top-rated program and helped mold that network as a left-leaning alternative to Fox News Channel. But his relationship with network bosses was stormy.

Current, co-founded in 2005 by former Vice President Al Gore, is now revamping its little-seen schedule. The addition of Olbermann could raise its profile among viewers.

Larry King began his career in 1957 at a Miami Beach radio station. (Photo by AFP)

By GLENN GARVIN

Five decades and 50,000 interviews after he first jabbed a microphone into a surprised pop singer’s face at a Miami Beach diner, Larry King is hanging up his suspenders. His Thursday night show on CNN will be the last of a broadcast career that eternally careened between pinnacles of wild success and pits of utter catastrophe.

King and his producers are being uncharacteristically tight-lipped about who will appear on the final edition of Larry King Live, which airs at 9 p.m. Comedian Bill Maher and American Idol host Ryan Seacrest will be at King’s Hollywood studio — but 14 mystery guests will also beam in from around the world via satellite.

Could President Barack Obama be among them? He’s already shared a microphone with King, as has every American president since Richard Nixon. O.J. Simpson? King’s mile-by-mile coverage of Simpson’s 1994 slow-motion car chase by Los Angeles police inaugurated the age of crime as entertainment. LeBron James? Bill Gates? Lady Gaga? They’ve all been chatted up on the nightly show.

Or could the legendary allure of appearing on King’s program — which has survived the nose-dive of his Nielsen ratings even if the show itself hasn’t — even draw guests from the other end of this mortal coil?

Then we might see Marlon Brando, who unexpectedly and indelibly ended a 1994 interview by kissing King full on the lips. (“I still can’t stop thinking about it,” King said 15 years later.) Or segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace, who opened an appearance on a King show by ostentatiously glancing around the TV studio, then sneering: “I don’t see any blacks working here.” (Retorted King: “They own the station. They’re out to lunch.”)

In fact, it’s hard to find anyone of any significance in the past half-century, living or dead, who hasn’t sat across the table from King in his various radio and TV incarnations.

His all-night call-in show that ran on 500-plus Mutual Radio Network affiliates from 1978 to 1994 was the first radio talk show with a national following, and had a long line of politicians and Hollywood celebrities anxious to make the guest list despite its midnight start time.

And when King joined CNN in 1985, his show was cable television’s first real hit, dominating the cable-news ratings well into the next century.

It was a fractured fairy tale for a Brooklyn high-school dropout who came to Miami in 1957 in search of beach bunnies but got a radio show when a disc jockey didn’t show up for work one day at the station where King was working as a janitor.

But King didn’t really make his mark until another station, WKAT, sent him to do a live broadcast from a Miami Beach deli. Desperately staving off dead air with interviews of waitresses and customer evaluations of the coffee, King pounced when somebody told him that teen idol Bobby Darin had just sat down for breakfast.

“All I knew about Bobby Darin was Mack the Knife,” King recalled during a 2007 interview with The Miami Herald. “So I asked him, where did Bobby Darin come from?” Darin replied so loquaciously that a style was born: For the rest of his career, King rarely prepared for interviews. Simple questions like “What’s your book about?” or “What’s your next project?” he believed, were just the ones his audience would have asked.

Though critics carped about it, King’s conversational style worked well for a long time. Hollywood celebrities loved the chance to talk nonstop on the one subject on which they were unquestionably experts — themselves. And while jealous reporters regarded King’s political interviews as interminable games of softball, King (and his very large audience) saw them as chances to get to know politicians as human beings rather than policy wonks.

Either way, King’s chats were the antithesis of the attack-dog interviews that make up so much of the rest of the daily cable-news menu. The only way a guest on King’s show could get in a fight was to pick it himself, as Howard Stern did in a 1987 interview.

First he taunted King — who had just returned to the air after a heart attack — with a pack of cigarettes: “Come on, let’s smoke. You know you want one.” When the startled King tried to portray Stern’s contempt as schtick — “Tell ‘em we’re friends!” Stern’s reply was icy: “We’re not friends . . . You say you’re friends with everybody.” The dazed King could only giggle nervously as Stern ran off onto bizarre tangents, accusing Fox TV executives of murdering comedian Joan River’s husband and plugging his new video in which a man set his own genitals on fire.

But for every show that went off the tracks, King did a hundred that kept the audience rapt and sometimes even broke news.

Maverick millionaire H. Ross Perot announced his surprise 1992 presidential campaign on King’s show. A year later, Perot would debate the proposed North American Free Trade Alliance treaty with Vice President Al Gore on King’s show in an intense spectacle that pulled in 16 million viewers.

In recent years, King’s chatty approach has come undone: partly because everybody from Jay Leno to Oprah Winfrey is doing the same thing, and partly because at 77, his softballs had turned to mushballs. In an interview with the two surviving Beatles, King confused his guest Ringo Starr with the late George Harrison. Comedian Jerry Seinfeld was enraged that King thought his top-rated TV sitcom had been canceled: “I was the No. 1 show in television, Larry,” Seinfeld acidly replied. “Do you know who I am?” At times the show became downright surreal, with King having heirhead hotel princess Paris Hilton reading aloud from the prison diaries of her three weeks in jail on a DUI conviction.

King’s popularity, which had survived a chaotic personal life that included an arrest, a bankruptcy and more scandalous divorces than anyone could count, could not withstand his growing confusion and irrelevance. His ratings tanked. His audience dropped 50 percent from 2009 to 2010, and CNN executives — who just three years ago said he could keep the show “as long as he is able to perform” — gently suggested it was time to turn off the microphone. It was a possibility King had foreseen.

“I love the line ‘as long as he is able to perform.’ ” he told The Herald three years ago.

“The question would be, in whose opinion? Whitey Herzog, the manager of the Cardinals, was offered a contract by August Busch, the owner. August Busch said to him, ‘Whitey, I’m giving you a lifetime contract.’

“And Whitey said, ‘Your life, or mine?’ “

Palm Beach Post reporter Barbara Marshall

At least Rachel McAdams never had to go out to the parking lot, shake a drunk technician awake and get him to turn on the TV station’s transmitter.

That’s what I did regularly in my first TV job, broadcasting the morning news cut-ins at a tiny Fort Pierce TV station.

In Morning Glory, a new movie about a failing network morning news show, McAdams plays Becky Fuller, an incandescently perky executive producer determined to boost the ratings of a show anchored by a former beauty queen, played by Diane Keaton, and Harrison Ford’s cranky and pompous newsroom legend who refuses to do – or even say the word – fluffy.

Fuller tries to persuade her anchors to engage in increasingly crazy stunts which probably seemed comically harebrained to the film’s writers. But when Keaton sumo-wrestles in a fat suit and the weather guy does his forecast from a roller coaster, I shrugged.

That’s only slightly more preposterous than the stories any TV reporter can tell. I spent 12 years in television journalism, as both a reporter and anchor at stations in Cincinnati and Miami. In TV, wacky is a fallback position when all else fails, and sometimes, just because it’s fun and you have a really expensive camera to play with.

In TV news, someone will inevitably make you wear the equivalent of a sumo suit (or in my case, a Day-Glo -orange blazer that was one station’s trademark and which we wore every day) or persuade you to do something as absurd as fly a plane without lessons.

The latter actually happened when one producer in Miami decided I should reenact a story about a woman who landed a small plane after her pilot husband collapsed beside her. I had a pilot next to me giving instructions but who, taking his assignment a little too literally, refused to touch the controls, even when the terrified cameraman and soundman in the back seat begged him to save their lives. (He did grab the controls when the first landing bounce went a little high.)

Cincinnati Channel 9's Barbara Marshall, Tom Sinkovitz and Jon Esther in a 1982 Cincinnati Post photo.

For a story on port pilots, someone else decided it would be fun if I climbed a rope ladder on the side of an oil tanker, at the sea buoy at Port Everglades, 1 mile out in the ocean (wearing heels) on a windy day.

I crashed through crack houses with a SWAT team at seven months pregnant (OK, not wacky, just crazy), climbed a 6-foot-tall pile of pot for a stand-up and spent an afternoon trying to keep the Goodyear Blimp aloft over Broward County (the blimp pilot was on board).

For 12 years, I thought it was the most fun you could have and still call it work.

Sometimes, wacky was the ticket to a promotion. Katie Couric was briefly my co-worker at a Miami station, where the news director said she wasn’t anchor material. So she dressed like a bag lady and spent the night on the streets of Miami for a heart-tugging story that helped catapult her to NBC and eventually the Today show. (In the movie, McAdams has the plucky perkiness of about 10 Courics.)

But there are few Mike Pomeroys, the crusty old-school news legend played by Harrison Ford, left in TV newsrooms. Once, every station had a guy like Pomeroy and the networks had handfuls – mossy silverbacks with stentorian deliveries who had started in newspapers and radio, then went on to invent TV news. Morley Safer and Bob Schieffer are two of the last, and they actually appear as themselves in one of the movie’s scenes.

My Pomeroys were Al Schottelkotte in Cincinnati and Ralph Renick in Miami who became legends in the industry. Once, an intruder burst into the studio while Schottelkotte was on the air. He punched the man with one hand while covering his mic with the other, but never stopped reading.

Could Glenn Beck do that? Anderson Cooper certainly has the “guns,” but does he have the guts?

Like Pomeroy in Morning Glory, these guys didn’t do banter and sometimes had difficulty adjusting to changes in the newsroom, like the rise of feature stories and female reporters.

Once, coming out of a story about dolls, Schottelkotte tossed it to me with a ham-handed, “and now to our own living doll”

These days, infotainment is so ingrained in both TV newscasts and newspapers as well that when Fuller yells at Pomeroy in the movie, “we’ve been debating news vs. entertainment for years and your side lost!”, it’s old news.

More telling for me was when Pomeroy warns Fuller that the most absorbing job is no substitute for a personal life.

“Let me tell you how it turns out,” he growls. “You’re left with nothing.”

Which is why I eventually fell out of love with the business. The job spawned too many divorces and I’d overhead too many women begging their nannies to “just stay four more hours until my live shot at 11.”

But it was fun while it lasted.

~ barbara_marshall@pbpost.com

News Channel 5 anchor Roxanne Stein with her morning co-anchor Jim Favole on November 8, 2010. The pair worked together early in their careers in Chattanooga, Tennessee and teamed back up years later in West Palm Beach when Favole signed with News Channel 5. Staff photo by Brandon Kruse/Palm Beach Post.

Read related story by Post reporter Barbara Marshall: The real world of TV reporting, from one who’s been there

When you wake up all fuzzy at 6 in the morning and flip on your TV, you’ve got to wonder:

How does Roxanne Stein do it?

How does that woman stay so peppy at this beastly hour?

How does she deliver the news in a straightforward and soothing way, then bounce around to traffic and weather and then throw in a jocular jab or two at co-anchor John Favole?

And how does she look so girl-next-door good so early? On high-definition TV!

News Channel 5's Roxanne Stein. Staff photo by Brandon Kruse/Palm Beach Post.

“Intestinal fortitude,” quips her boss, Steve Wasserman, WPTV NewsChannel 5 vice president and general manager.

And he’s not kidding.

Roxanne Stein has awakened at 1:45 a.m. almost every weekday for the past 17 years to co-anchor Today on 5, which airs from 4:30 a.m. to 7 a.m.

Being on the air before dawn for two-and-a-half hours straight is “a tough gig,” she admits.

But she loves it, she says. She’s “lucky” and “blessed” to do it.

Take one look at the ratings, and it seems a bunch of folks feel lucky she does it, too.

Stein and Favole are the longest-running anchor duo on local TV, with 61,000 or so adults watching them on any given weekday morning – far more than the other two local stations combined.

They are particularly beloved among a most coveted demographic: Women 25 to 54, who are up early getting their kids off to school and planning family schedules and deciding what their households will buy.

Of all the women in that age group who watch local news from 6 a.m. to 7 a.m., two-thirds are tuned to John and Roxanne.

That’s a powerful club of some 20,000 women – and they’re practically a sisterhood for Stein.

“When people are in their slippers in the morning, and they wake up and the world’s gone frantic,” she says, “they like seeing a familiar old face.”

COMFORT AND TRUST

‘What you see is them’

These familiar faces – Stein and Favole – are as smooth together as a long-running Vaudeville act.

“We complete each other’s sentences,” says Favole, who Stein helped recruit to fill the WPTV co-anchor spot 16 years ago.

He never expected to do morning news, he recalls, but it was a great station, and Stein is “the ultimate professional.”

Plus, Favole says, he knew sitting next to her would provide one sure thing: Humor.

“She is funny, and she doesn’t know it,” he says. “I always tell her: ‘Two thousand comedians out of work, and we got you!’ “

They fit so well together, Stein says, because they’ve known each other for 22 years – they worked together in Chattanooga, Tenn., before coming to WPTV – “and we have been through everything together, on and off the air.”

Hurricanes. Butterfly ballots. Terrorism. Tragedy. Good news and bad.

Their boss, WPTV’s executive producer of morning news coverage Greg Neubacher, credits their success to their “honest personalities. What you see is them. They don’t put on a show for the audience.”

If that means Stein gets a little sappy over the animal stories, or Favole gives her a funny look and they “crack up like idiots,” in Favole’s words – that’s them.

Mostly, they are “genuine, working journalists,” Neubacher says – writing and rewriting, updating and editing through the wee hours.

The ability to survive on five hours of sleep and then go live on-air and speak authoritatively and accurately for two-and-a-half hours is special, even among seasoned TV journalists, says Neubacher, who has produced morning news for 20 years, three of those at WPTV.

“You can’t live your life as the average person does,” he says, “and you have to understand what morning risers want to know.”

Consider: Brian Williams is on air for 30 minutes on the NBC Nightly News. Stein and Favole are on five times as long.

“It’s like a concert,” Favole says. “It’s longer than most movies. And she does it all with a smile.”

“Rox” relies on “Favs” to be there, whether she’s tossing him a story or a wisecrack. They are so in sync, Favole says, that he can see in her eyes what she’s about to do next, and vice versa.

“In the nicest way, he’s like an old shoe,” Stein says. “He lets me be me.”

SMALL-TOWN ROOTS

Proud to be a farmer’s daughter

And who would “me” be?

First and foremost, Roxanne Stein is a farmer’s daughter, raised to rise early and work hard.

She spent her childhood years chasing behind her father, Richard, on the family’s farm in Charles Town, W.Va., riding horses with him and tending the animals and reveling in the wide open spaces.

They moved to Lancaster, Pa., when Roxanne was 10, and she joined the 4H Club, eventually majoring in agriculture at Penn State.

Her parents, Richard and Ruth, raised four children who all sought wider worlds: Raymond, who taught Chinese in Alaska; Roxanne, who got her first TV job in Lancaster, as the weather girl; Ronda, who became a nurse; and Roberta, who became a Navy commander.

Roxanne’s farmer-girl roots are apparent today: She’s ever-practical (she buys jackets for work for $5 at Goodwill), collegial (Neubacher calls her one of the best team builders he’s ever worked with) and a stickler for detail.

She worries about each viewer, her producer says, and what they need to start their day.

And she has absolutely no pretense.

“Roxanne,” he says, “is very real.”

EMOTIONAL BOND

TV ‘family’ eases her grief

She is so real that her emotions are right there, easy to see, even with a TV screen between her and the viewers.

They notice everything – from her weight to her hair to her mood.

Six years ago, when her eyes lacked their usual sparkle, the e-mails flooded in: “You look sad. What’s wrong? Are you OK?”

And Roxanne wasn’t OK. She wouldn’t be OK for a long, long time.

Her brother Raymond – age 49, father of two, nonsmoker – had been diagnosed with lethal lung cancer, which he fought for a year before he died. A few months later, her father – the rock of her life – died suddenly of an aneurysm.

The loss propelled Stein into a “dark hole,” a grief so deep she spent 18 months white-knuckling her way through the day, trying not to fall apart.

Some mornings, she would look straight into the camera and recite the news and wonder to herself: “News is happening, life is going on, but how can you be happy? Do you know what just happened?” Then her thoughts would quickly return to those viewers: “Everybody is suffering in some way. Maybe their child is sick today. Maybe they’re losing their house today. They’re counting on me and John to be there, to be balanced and hopeful.”

She helped herself recover by thinking of them: “I call this our Today on 5 family, and I mean it. It’s our group – we get together every morning. I could feel that e-mail arm around me. As I looked into the camera, I could feel it: ‘These people care about me, and I care about them.’ “

News Channel 5's Roxanne Stein. Staff photo by Brandon Kruse/Palm Beach Post.

HEALING, ON HORSEBACK

‘I began to get my life back’

More than the “e-mail arm” reached out, too.

A doctor she met years ago doing one of her “medical breakthroughs” reports, Helen Bartosek, had been encouraging Stein for a while to come out to Ashland Farms in Wellington and take a ride on her horse.

Now, seeing Stein’s suffering, Bartosek insisted : You will come out to ride .

“I hadn’t been on a horse in 25 years,” Stein says. “But when I got on that horse, it was amazing – I began to get my life back.”

She now rides regularly, and even gets tips from Ken and Emily Smith, two of America’s top trainers, who have become part of her new circle of horsey friends.

Stein’s husband, photographer Steve Moss, supported her, too, encouraging her to walk the beach and just chill, watching all the TV shows she can’t watch during the week: The Office, 30 Rock, Desperate Housewives.

Stein and Moss – “The Moss Man” to his friends and his wife – got to know each other at staff gatherings soon after she joined WPTV. They dated for several years and have been wed for 12.

“They’re really a good fit,” says Bartosek, who grew up in the 4H Club, like Stein, and is now one of her best friends. “He’s laid back and she’s more Type A.”

Moss also loves animals – a crucial trait, since they have two cats, plus Stein rescues dogs from time to time, too.

A few years ago, Roxanne asked Steve the question husbands never want to answer: “Do I need to lose weight?”

His diplomatic response: “If you want to do something, you know what to do.”

“I was 52 and the fittest fat person I knew,” Stein says. But she realized that she had let her body go as the years rolled along, and part of getting her life back was getting her health back.

Her game plan was simple: Don’t deprive yourself, do move more.

She cut out processed foods, began watching her carb consumption late in the day and stopped eating sugar at night – and she upped her exercise. She runs 4 to 5 miles six days a week and works out at the gym regularly – often with a group of friends.

She hasn’t eaten red meat since she was 18, concentrating on fish (“lots of salmon”) and chicken. And she still eats the brownies she loves to bake – “but I run 4 miles beforehand.”

She eventually lost 45 pounds, and though she’s now model-slim at 55, the resourceful Roxanne didn’t rush out and buy a whole new wardrobe of expensive skinny clothes.

“The best jeans are at Goodwill!” she exclaims. “I got some 7 for All Mankind jeans there for $9. And a Chanel jacket with the tags still on!”

She’s the most humble person you’d ever meet, still the disarming girl from the country, says Bartosek.

When you grow up in a farm town, you’re like that. You clean the stalls, you wrap the horses’ legs, you work.

“Riding is in my DNA,” Stein says.

And outside at Ashland Farms, out in the brightness of day, the TV anchor who excels in the darkness of night hops on a horse and recharges her mega-watt smile. Out here, she remembers who she is: Her father’s daughter.

“Some days when I am riding, and I look around at this beautiful place – I gaze up into the sky and say: ‘Can you see where I am, Dad? Can you see this?’ “

‘The world doesn’t function on our hours’

Roxanne Stein’s typical workday

1:45 a.m.: Alarm goes off

1:50 a.m. to 2:15: Feeds cats Pumbaa and Timone, packs healthful lunch (last Friday it was a half of a whole grain bagel with egg whites and apple slices), puts on clothes but no makeup (‘I’m bare-faced! It’s scary!’)

2:15 or so: Leaves Wellington home

2:45 a.m.: Arrives at WPTV NewsChannel 5 in West Palm Beach

3 a.m. to 4:30: Does makeup and hair, drinks some coffee and has a little apple butter, posts on Facebook, checks and writes news

4:30 a.m. to 7: On air, Today on 5

7 a.m. to 10: Does medical news and other reporting

10 a.m. to noon or so: Goes to gym or rides horses

Afternoon: Naps for a half-hour, runs 4 miles or takes an exercise class with a group of friends, does charity work or things around the house, prepares for next morning

6 or so: Dinner with husband Steve Moss

8 or 8:30 p.m.: Bedtime

‘People ask us all the time:

Do you get eight hours sleep?’ John Favole says. ‘No! You can’t go to bed at 6 or 6:30 p.m. We get five or five-and-a-half hours of sleep and try to catch up later.’

Does Roxanne sleep late on weekends? Sure

Dimensional Harmony performs 'September' from Earth, Wind and Fire. (photo courtesy NBC)

Boynton Beach High School’s choir, called Dimensional Harmony, is one of four finalists competing for a chance to perform live on NBC’s Today.

The winning choir will be chosen based on Internet votes. The winner will be announced Friday, and their winning choir will appear (briefly) via satellite. But the big prize is a trip in New York and a chance to sing live as part of the Today Show‘s Choir Showdown!

According to a news release, the finalists were selected on reviews of video submissions from show choirs across the country. In Boynton’s video, they sang September by Earth, Wind and Fire. You can see their performance here.

The other finalists include Butler Headliners from Butler Community College in Kansas, The Ball Sate University Singers, and Celebration Show Choir from Mars Hill Bible School in Alabama.

Voting ends at 8 a.m. tomorrow. To watch the videos and maybe vote for the locals, click here.

Last week, “Bed Intruder” climbed the charts after getting the “Auto-Tune The News” treatment by the Gregory Brothers.

NBC’s Today did a report on the phenomenon, catching up with Antonio Dotson, whose initial rant about a serial rapist in the projects where he and his sister live started the whole thing:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

In a no-frills studio in Fox News’ Manhattan headquarters, Bill O’Reilly was wrangling with a guest, as usual.

This time it wasn’t a liberal foe but conservative strategist Dick Morris, who was hammering the Justice Department for hiring a group of lawyers — dubbed the “al-Qaida Seven” by the right-wing advocacy group Keep America Safe — that had represented terrorism suspects in private practice.

But O’Reilly didn’t buy Morris’ argument that the lawyers’ past work made them a security risk. “You shouldn’t be demonized because you take on an unpopular client,” he countered.

The top-rated cable talk-show host, who is coming to Palm Beach to deliver a speech at Mar-a-Lago on Friday night, has always been a contrarian. He’s a self-described culture warrior who touts traditionalism while also favoring gay adoption and some gun-control measures.

But in recent months, as the country’s political discourse has curdled, O’Reilly’s independent streak has become even more pronounced — particularly in contrast to Fox News’ newest star, Glenn Beck, who has rallied both passionate fans and detractors with his apocalyptic rhetoric about the Obama administration.

O’Reilly urged a national conference of conservatives to refrain from personal attacks on President Obama. He noted that employing fear in politics is a “double-edged sword” that “can lead to violence and heartbreak.” And he declared that he did not believe the president was a socialist, drawing mockery from radio host Rush Limbaugh. “Name-calling gets us nowhere,” O’Reilly replied mildly.

He still digs into his favorite targets with relish, particularly the “far-left media” and Hollywood celebrities. But lately, O’Reilly’s tenor has been remarkably measured.

“You’ve become in some ways the voice of sanity here, which as I said, is like being the thinnest kid at fat camp,” comedian Jon Stewart quipped during an appearance on The O’Reilly Factor last month.

Sitting in his 17th-floor corner office on a recent afternoon, O’Reilly maintained that he hasn’t changed. “If you’re coming to me to hear the choir, then you’ve got to be a relatively new viewer, because we’ve been pretty independent for a long period of time,” said the 60-year-old host, thumbing through manila folders holding research for that evening’s show.

O’Reilly has long cultivated his outsider status, bristling at being labeled a conservative or a Republican mouthpiece. So it’s not surprising that at a time when commentators on the political right have sharpened their attacks on Obama, he has sought a different tack: criticizing the president’s policies but not the man himself. “I like Obama,” he said, but thinks he lacks the experience to handle the job.

The O’Reilly Factor, which kicks off the network’s prime-time lineup, is Fox News’ most valuable advertising vehicle, a fact evident in O’Reilly’s salary, which is well north of $10 million a year, according to a person familiar with the terms. This year, he is on track to record his best ratings ever, averaging 3.7 million viewers, up 8 percent over 2009, according to Nielsen. His competitors lag far behind, with MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann pulling 984,000 viewers on average and CNN’s Campbell Brown drawing 635,000.

‘A little more cautious’

O’Reilly, who studies the ratings every afternoon, said that despite his dominance, he never feels he can relax. But he acknowledged that his growing viewership lets him feel “that I have a responsibility to be a little more cautious, be a little more circumspect when I go after somebody to make sure we have everything covered. Because I can destroy lives. And I’m not going to do that until I’m 100 percent convinced that the person deserves what they get.”

O’Reilly’s on-air verbal assaults have been part of his trademark since the onetime correspondent for CBS and ABC joined the then-nascent Fox News Channel. With his elbows-out style and populist instincts, he beat out Larry King in 2002 as the most-watched cable news host, a title he has never relinquished.

“The dirty little secret of Bill’s show is people tune in who like him and people tune in who don’t like him,” said Bill Shine, executive vice president for programming.

And plenty still don’t. Liberal detractors such as Media Matters for America hammer at him daily, challenging his assertions. “I don’t think he’s changed,” said Ari Rabin-Havt, the group’s vice president of research and communications.

‘I like Beck’

In the last year, however, Beck has replaced O’Reilly as the network’s lightning rod. While Beck’s denunciations of big government have made him a hero of the tea party movement, he has drawn sharp criticism for his dark warnings about Obama, particularly his claim that the president is “racist,” triggering an advertising boycott of his show organized by an African-American advocacy group.

O’Reilly said he doesn’t begrudge Beck the attention. “More power to him, man,” said O’Reilly, casually propping his foot up against the edge of his desk. “It takes the heat off me. I tell him, ‘Be as crazy as you want.’”

“I like Beck; I understand exactly what he’s doing,” he added. “He genuinely feels the country is in bad shape. I think guys like that deserve a voice.”
Beck has found a megaphone: His 5 p.m. EDT show has averaged 2.8 million viewers this year, beating out Sean Hannity as the network’s second-most-watched host.

But O’Reilly said he’s not worried about the prospect of Beck overtaking him. “What am I supposed to do, hate Glenn Beck because he’s successful?” he asked. “That’s what they do in Hollywood. I’m a New Yorker.”

If you go

Bill O’Reilly: Speaks Friday at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach. He will headline a fund-raiser for the It Happened to Alexa Foundation, which helps rape survivors and their families face the hardships of a criminal trial.

Ticket prices for the event, which kicks off at 6:30 p.m., run $400 per person for dinner and cocktails.

For information: (716) 754-9105 or e-mail Augellos@verizon.net .

Amanpour, who will start in August, replaces George Stephanopoulos. He left the show in December to take over as co-host of ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Amanpour’s hiring indicates a change in direction for a show that is concerned primarily with politics and domestic issues — like other Washington-based counterparts “Meet the Press” on NBC and “Face the Nation” on CBS.

“With Christiane, we have the opportunity to provide our audiences with something different on Sunday mornings,” said ABC News President David Westin. “We will continue to provide the best in interviews about domestic politics and policies. But now we will add to that an international perspective.”

Amanpour is currently host of a weekday show that airs on the CNN International network. Highlights run as the half-hour “Amanpour” show on CNN’s domestic network on Sunday.

Westin noted, in an e-mail to his staff, that he talked to Amanpour several times in the past about coming to ABC News. “Until now, it wasn’t the right time or the right fit,” he said.

Jim Walton, president of CNN Worldwide, said he knows it was a difficult decision for Amanpour, who had worked as an international correspondent for the network since 1990.

“CNN and Christiane helped make each other great,” he said.

After being based in London for many years, Amanpour moved to the United States three years ago to be with her husband, former U.S. State Department spokesman James Rubin.

Hal Boedeker is reporting that the news division is planning a major shift to digital journalism, including intensive training for the remaining employees.

According to Boedeker, ABC News David Westin sent the following in a memo:

An essential part of this intended transformation will be extensive training in the new technology — whether in the field or in-house … When we are finished, many job descriptions will be different, different skill sets may be required, and yes, we will likely have substantially fewer people on staff at ABC News.

Among Westin’s planned changes are the expanded use of digital journalists, staffers shooting and editing their own material and combining weekend and weekday operations on ABC News’ morning show, Good Morning America.

Alex O'Loughlin: The new McGarrett

Jack Lord: The original McGarrett

Meet the new Jack Lord.

Or make that Steve McGarrett.

Alex O’Loughlin, the star of failed TV series Moonlight and Three Rivers, has been cast as the top cop on The Rock in CBS’ planned rebooting of the classic crime drama, Hawaii Five-O, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

O’Loughlin looks handsome enough. But he doesn’t seem to have the hard stare and unmoveable hair that made Lord such a ’60s and ’70s icon. Who can forget such classic badass phrases as “Book ‘em Danno! Murder one!”

The pilot will be filmed later this year, presumably to make the fall schedule. Daniel Dae Kim, of the TV series Lost, has also been cast to play the part of Five-O detective Chin Ho Kelly. No word yet on casting the parts of Danno or Kono or Wo Fat.

One word of advice: Keep the old theme song:

Aloha.

Bill O’Reilly’s Great American Boomer Quiz

Stewart agreed to appear on “The O’Reilly Factor” during a two-part interview that will air tonight and Thursday. Stewart, who regularly lampoons O’Reilly and Fox News, has only appeared on the show once before — in September 2004, when he mocked O’Reilly for calling for a boycott of France. O’Reilly has appeared three times on Stewart’s “The Daily Show,” where he once called the show’s fans “stoned slackers.”

Oprah, Glenn Beck Top List of Most Popular TV Stars

Fox says the two talk show hosts will sit down for a taped interview that will cover everything from President Obama and health care to upcoming elections and bias in the media, according to the L.A. Times.

America Ferrera has held the title role on 'Ugly Betty' since its debut in 2006. (ABC)

More: America Ferrera returns to indie movie fest

ABC has decided to make the current season of Ugly Betty the show’s last.

Zap2It reports the comic soap opera will not continue, ending after a four-season run.

The show was a smash when it debuted in 2006, an Americanized version of an extremely popular telenovela that featured America Ferrera in a breakout role.

But Ugly Betty steadily lost viewers, was relegated to Friday nights, and even a last-minute shift to a strong Wednesday night by ABC couldn’t save it.

According to a statement:

We’ve mutually come to the difficult decision to make this ‘Ugly Betty’s’ final season,” a joint statement from Exec producer Silvio Horta and ABC president Steve McPherson reads. “And are announcing now as we want to allow the show ample time to write a satisfying conclusion. We are extremely proud of this groundbreaking series, and felt it was important to give the fans a proper farewell.”

Sarah Palin is taking her conservative message to Fox News. An attorney for the former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate says Palin will provide some type of commentary for the cable network.

Attorney Thomas Van Flein declined to elaborate on the deal.

Palin is hugely popular with conservatives and has more than 1 million Facebook followers.

She stepped down as Alaska governor in July, 17 months before the end of her first term in office. Her resignation came less than a year after she vaulted to overnight fame as John McCain’s running mate.

Palin worked part-time as a weekend sportscaster in the 1980s for KTUU-TV in Anchorage.

BIG SCREEN

Daybreakers stars Ethan Hawke and comes out Friday. (Lionsgate Pictures)

Daybreakers (R) — In the near future, a scientist (Ethan Hawke) tries to find a cure for a plague that has turned the bulk of the human population into vampires, making the remaining few people priceless sources of nourishment for the bloodsuckers.

Leap Year (PG) — Amy Adams stars as a woman tired of waiting for her longtime boyfriend (Matthew Goode) to propose, so she hatches a scheme to make sure they spend Feb. 29 in Ireland, where tradition allows women to propose. Directed by Anand Tucker (Shopgirl).

SMALL SCREEN

Harum Scarum (6 a.m. Friday, Turner Classic Movies) — Elvis Presley goes to Baghdad to assassinate an Arab king — at last, we’re getting to the root of American problems in Iraq. Celebrate Elvis’ 75th birthday by watching what even hard-core fans agree is the absolute worst of his movies — and it’s hosted by ex-wife Priscilla!

This Emotional Life (9 p.m. Monday, WPBT-PBS 2) — Psychologist Daniel Gilbert hosts this three-part series (it continues Tuesday and Wednesday) that examines why it’s so hard for people to find happiness. Aside from the fact that you didn’t get a Zhu Zhu hamster for Christmas, I mean.

Latino 101 (9 p.m. Friday, Sí TV) — A 13-episode series hosted by Joey Medina, Judy Reyes and a couple dozen other Hispanic performers that busts some Latino stereotypes, affirms others and generally pushes a bunch of hot buttons. Most importantly, it explains the enduring popularity of Sabado Gigante and Don Francisco. Or tries to, anyway.

Walter Cronkite's voice was used to introduce the 'CBS Evening News', even after his death, until this week, when Morgan Freeman introduced the program. (Getty Images file)

Nearly six months after Walter Cronkite’s death, his voice is leaving the “CBS Evening News.”

His introduction of anchor Katie Couric was replaced Monday by a voiceover featuring actor Morgan Freeman.

The legendary CBS News anchor recorded the introduction, played at the beginning of most newscasts, when Couric started at CBS in 2006. Cronkite’s voice was kept on the air even after his death July 17.

“As comforting as it is to look back on the great career that Walter had, we’re looking forward now and we just felt it was the right time to make the move that at some point had to be made,” said CBS News and Sports President Sean McManus. “This seemed like the appropriate time since Walter’s passing to make the move.”

Having Freeman on board gives CBS the flexibility to record different intros when Couric has special reports and is on location, he said.

CBS has replaced Cronkite with a generic voice over the past few months when it wanted to highlight something special.

The change also gives the network more consistency, McManus said.

Charles Gibson has been reporting the news in one form or another for ABC for 34 years. (AP)

Considered one way, Charles Gibson’s career in TV news seems to be a model of stability: 34 years logged with one employer, ABC. There, he did his job well and rose to the top echelon of his profession, forming a firm bond with his viewers and offering his gracious signoff, “I hope you had a good day.”

On the other hand, Gibson, who Friday retires from the “World News” anchor desk and from ABC as a full-time employee, is bowing out as more than an admired network news star.

At 66, he’s a proven utility player, game to handle a range of positions and scramble to the rescue when needed.

It was in 1975 that Gibson joined ABC News, where he was named White House correspondent a year later. After numerous other assignments, he began a long stretch as co-anchor of “Good Morning America” in 1987, then left in 1998 to serve as a co-anchor of the “Primetime Thursday” newsmagazine for six years.

This might seem like a steady-as-he-goes career climb. But in 1999, less than a year after exiting “GMA” for prime-time prominence, Gibson was summoned back for supplementary service in the morning-show trenches. He and ABC News colleague Diane Sawyer (a morning-TV veteran from her days at CBS) were good soldiers and resumed setting their alarm clocks for the middle of the night.

Their first morning together they were chipper as they greeted their audience:

“Hi, I’m Diane Sawyer from Louisville, Ky. — the new kid on the block.”

“And I’m Charles Gibson, originally from Evanston, Ill. I hope you remember the old kid on the block.”

Their mandate: to stanch the ratings hemorrhage at “GMA” during Gibson’s brief time away. The chemistry between them worked, and what was conceived as stopgap triage continued for more than seven years.

Then Gibson announced his departure for a second time.

Demonstrating his versatility that final week on “GMA,” he reported on terrorists and politicians. He also furnished his audience with another kind of news flash: You can potty train your toddler in just 24 hours (or so claimed his on-camera interviewee, who had written a book on the subject).

But Gibson was already involved in another mission for ABC News.

A year earlier, in 2005, “World News” anchor Peter Jennings died from lung cancer. Then, early in 2006, Jennings’ co-successors were both forced to give up their roles at the anchor desk: Bob Woodruff was gravely injured on assignment in Iraq, and Elizabeth Vargas became pregnant.

Again, the network turned to Gibson. For several weeks, he even did double duty. There he was, at the crack of dawn on “GMA,” then at dinner time on “World News.”

By July 2006, he was finally free to concentrate on “World News” while serving, at last, as the face of ABC News.

Since then, he has led “World News” in its spirited battle with customary ratings champ Brian Williams at NBC’s “Nightly News” as well as Katie Couric, who in a whirlwind of publicity arrived at “The CBS Evening News” shortly after Gibson’s “World News” induction, only to languish in third place.

It is this high office that Gibson is vacating after Friday’s “World News” broadcast.

In an orderly and low-key passing of the torch, Sawyer will replace him Monday at the “World News” anchor desk.

Meanwhile, in Gibson’s new life of much-earned retirement, he presumably will still be hoping viewers tuned to “World News” have “had a good day.”

Dollhouse will have its last episode on FOX on Jan. 22. (FOX)

Despite the best efforts of a fervent fan base, FOX has decided to pull the plug on the sci-fi drama Dollhouse.

The FOX drama joins the likes of NBC’s Trauma and ABC’s Hank on the list of departed shows. ABC’s Eastwick also met the axe.

Dollhouse will be allowed to finish its 13-episode run before FOX finally ends the show on Jan. 22. The show, about a woman who is implanted with a different personality as she is sent on assignments, never really got above cult status.

On his Web site, whedonesque.com, creator Joss Whedon released a short statement: “I’m extremely proud of the people I’ve worked with: my star, my staff, my cast, my crew. I feel the show is getting better pretty much every week, and I think you’ll agree in the coming months. I’m grateful that we got to put it on, and then come back and put it on again.”

Trauma, which had gained its share of debate over its portrayal of emergency service personnel, is apparently in the process of shooting its final episode this week.

According to New York Times’ blog The Bay Area, Trauma was the fall’s most expensive new show, costing $3 million an episode. But it could never get over the ratings hump – Zap2it reports the show garnered a 3.4/5 share for its last episode.

Hank, which starred Kelsey Grammer as a formerly powerful business bigwig who is suddenly forced into spending time with his family, also struggled despite being positioned with new comedies that performed more strongly – Modern Family, Cougar Town and The Middle, all of which got orders for more shows.

Eastwick, based on the John Updike novel and the film adaptation The Witches of Eastwick, will also be allowed to finish off its 13-episode run before ending. The show starred Lindsay Price, Rebecca Romijn and Jaime Ray Newman as women brought together by a mysterious stranger, played by Paul Gross.