Though it hasn't been officially announced yet, FishBowl DC is reporting that CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour has been offered the job anchoring ABC's Sunday morning news show 'This Week.' The show was previously anchored by George Stephanopolous, who is now on 'Good Morning America.'

This would be quite a change for Amanpour. Her work on CNN has her trotting all over the globe (and hosting her own international affairs show 'Amanpour'). Sources say that she has told friends that she doesn't want to move to Washington, D.C., she wants to do the show out of New York City and also travel a lot for the show and report from foreign locales. This could change the focus of 'This Week' from mostly domestic political issues to international issues.

I'm wondering if CBS has tried to get Amanpour on a full-time basis. CNN's Anderson Cooper does regular reports for '60 Minutes' and so has Amanpour.

Back a couple of years ago, when there seemed to be a new "Katie Couric is going to leave 'The CBS Evening News' soon" story every hour, one of the names mentioned as her replacement was CNN's Anderson Cooper. Now it looks like those rumors are back, and Cooper's name is being brought up again, only this time a little bit more seriously.

The New York Times is reporting that CBS execs have talked to Cooper about the anchor position. Cooper is already part of the CBS family, contributing to '60 Minutes,' so it's not something that is coming out of left field.

George Stephanopulous had planned to continue hosting This Week when he took over for Diane Sawyer on Good Morning, America (still haven't gotten used to him there), but he gave up the position a couple of weeks ago. So who is going to replace him on the Sunday morning new show? No one knows yet, though reporter Jake Tapper's name has often been mentioned. In the meantime, they're getting people to fill in for him, and this Sunday it will be Barbara Walters.

As a lot of you know, Walters was actually a newswoman before she started refereeing fights between Joy Behar and Elisabeth Hasselbeck on The View, so it will be good to see her in that role again (no, her celebrity interview specials don't count and she's not on 20/20 much anymore). Her guests will be FOX News head Roger Ailes and Arianna Huffington, former Republican and head of The Huffington Post.

I was wondering when this would happen. CBS has replaced Walter Cronkite as the announcer of The CBS Evening News.

Now, those of you who never watch The CBS Evening News are probably saying, "of course they replaced him. Didn't he die months ago?" Yes, he did, but he recorded the opening ("This is The CBS Evening News, with Katie Couric") before he passed away and the show kept the same opening even after he was gone.

And who is the new announcer? It's none other than Andy Dick! This is a daring choice by CBS. OK, I'm kidding, it's actually actor Morgan Freeman. Which is only fair, since Michael Douglas does the intro for NBC Nightly News (ABC has Mike Rowe).

So Diane Sawyer took over for Charles Gibson last night on ABC's World News. I don't know how "important" her first episode was. She's filled in on the show before and obviously wouldn't suddenly start yelling expletives or start drooling. She handled herself fine (though if I want to see a chick read the news I watch Katie on CBS). What did everyone else think?

It's less than three months until Diane Sawyer replaces the retiring Charlie Gibson as the anchor of ABC's 'World News,' and yet there's no word on a successor for Sawyer as the star of ABC News' cash cow, 'Good Morning America.'

You'd think the network would be auditioning newswomen for the post, but according to the Los Angeles Times, the network wants a man -- someone who, along with current 'GMA' co-host Robin Roberts, would restore the Ma-and-Pa dynamic that's been traditional for eons on network morning news shows. ABC is also looking to hire from within, the Times reports.

As we've said here many times before, Brian Williams is a funny guy. It's great to see a newsman be able to do really funny bits while talking to Conan O'Brien or Jon Stewart. But should he be doing it all the time?

Williams is going to be a regular on The Jay Leno Show when it debuts next Monday, introducing a regular segment titled "Stories Not Good Enough For Nightly News". Will it hurt your opinion of him (he got some negative press when he hosted SNL), or can you separate the serious news Brian Williams with the Jay Leno Show Brian Williams?

This is from last week but I think it's worth showing today, because when Brian Williams went on The Daily Show they didn't just talk about politics, they got into a sometimes good-natured, sometimes prickly trade of insults (some of Stewart's digs are clearly serious, but Williams can give as good as he gets). They also mention Walter Cronkite and Billy Mays.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Brian Williams
www.thedailyshow.com

[via TV Newser]

Think about this for a moment: who is the person on television that viewers trust the most to get their news from? Someone from the cable news channels? One of the network news anchors?

Time conducted a survey across the country, asking people who the most trusted newscaster is now that Walter Cronkite is gone. Not really sure why Cronkite matters in this context because he hadn't been a newsman in quite some time, but it's interesting to see all of the statistics by state. You probably won't agree with who came in first with 44%.

This isn't one of those "TV people are so vain!" posts. If you're on television you have to make sure your hair is OK and you have makeup on and all that. I bet even Walter Cronkite wanted to make sure he picked out the right tie in the morning. So this post of David Gregory combing his hair in the middle of a Today story about the moon landing is here not to dump on Gregory but because it's an odd, random tech glitch.

[via TV Newser]

OK, if you were to pick the weekend that Walter Cronkite died, you couldn't have picked a more ironic, odd weekend for it to happen.

Cronkite was a huge fan of the space program, and he was incredibly giddy during CBS news coverage of the first moon landing in 1969. And here we are on the 40th anniversary of that very mission. Reminds me of when Charles Schulz died, hours before the very last Peanuts cartoon ran.

This isn't just the week for prime time Emmy nominations, we also have the nominations for news.

Here's the list of news and documentary Emmy nominations. There are many categories, including several for the cable news channels, but a few of the big nominations include Charlie Gibson's interview with Sarah Palin for Outstanding Interview (really?), NBC Nightly News coverage of Tim Russert's death for Outstanding Coverage of a Breaking News Story, 60 Minutes taking three of the four nominations in the Outstanding Feature Story in a News Magazine category (Primetime took the other), and three nominations for The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric.

[via TV Newser]

Remember when every single person in the world said that Katie Couric would be gone from The CBS Evening News by the end of 2008? HA!

Not only is Couric not going anywhere, her show is actually doing better, thanks in part to the election coverage. It's still in third place, of course (and I think it will probably stay there for quite some time, if not forever), but her ratings are improving. The first week of this month, Couric's show trailed ABC's World News by 1.5 million viewers. That might seem like a lot, but Couric trailed that show by 2.8 million viewers the same week last year. The same thing happened last week compared to the same week in 2008. Hey, at least it's a move in the right direction.

While viewership continues to slip and all that "Katie is leaving after the election" talk still swirls, it looks like the industry actually likes her show.

The CBS Evening News won the Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Newscast from the Radio Television News Directors Association the other night. ABC won the most awards, including Best Overall, Documentary, Hard news, Spot News Coverage, and Videography. Not really sure what the difference is between Best Newscast and Best Overall, but maybe Best Overall combines all facets of a TV network's news division while Best Newscast just focuses on the 30 minute nightly show that the network does. Either way it's something I'm sure you're going to see in ads for The CBS Evening News.

CBS News also won for Best Web Site (I'd link to the full list of awards but the RTNDA site seems to be down right now.)

[via TV Newser]

There have been approximately 400 stories written about CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric in the past few weeks: she's thinking about leaving, she's getting her lowest ratings ever, etc, etc. And now TV viewers are weighing in on what Katie should do.

A Gallup Poll asked 1,016 adults (I'd love to hear why they come up with such numbers, why they didn't keep calling until it was 1100 or at least stop calling at 1000) what Katie should do. And you know what? 46% of respondents say she should stay as anchor of the show! Where are those viewers when she needs them?

Here are some other results from the poll: