New World News debuts tonight

The new, young faces of World News Tonight debut this evening on ABC. Five months after Peter Jennings' death from lung cancer, Elizabeth Vargas and Bob Woodruff will co-host the nightly newscast. They are the first network anchor team since Dan Rather and Connie Chung shared the desk at CBS in the 1990s. But, don't expect to see them sharing the desk very often. Vargas says it's not going to be two anchors sharing 22 minutes of news, rather, one of them will most likely be reporting anchoring from the field while the other reads the rest of the news from the desk. In fact, tonight's debut of the new format has Vargas at the anchor desk and Woodruff off in Iran. I imagine this is what the anchoring-from-the-field schtick is going to be like: Vargas and Woodruff sharing different "in-depth" or "special" reports about issues rather than day-to-day news events. The purpose of Woodruff's visit to Iran tonight is to help bring better understanding to Americans about a very powerful country that has been on the Bush Administration's radar ever since it was included in the "axis of evil".

Vargas and Woodruff take over the #2-rated newscast in the nation, with Brian Williams and NBC still on top. CBS has yet to decide what it will do with its open anchor position and there are still whispers that Katie Couric is in contention.