Christiane Amanpour
Veteran journalist Christiane Amanpour was named on Thursday to anchor the ABC News' Sunday morning program "This Week" starting in August, after 27 years as an international correspondent for CNN.
Amanpour, 52, was hired to replace George Stephanopoulos, the former White House aide who became the new anchor of ABC's weekday breakfast-hour show "Good Morning America" in December.
ABC News senior White House correspondent Jake Tapper will serve as the regular, interim anchor for "This Week" until the debut of Amanpour in August, the Walt Disney Co-owned network said.
The London-born journalist, whose father is Iranian and mother is British, built her career reporting for CNN from some of the world's most troubled and conflict-ridden regions, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Rwanda and the Balkans.
She married U.S. State Department spokesman James Rubin in 1998.
Her departure from CNN after 27 years comes at a troubled time for Time Warner Inc's cable network, whose ratings are in a slump, and for ABC News, which recently undertook a reorganization involving one of its biggest cutbacks in years.
She is set to join ABC after "This Week" had managed last year to almost catch up with the No. 1 Sunday morning talk show, NBC's "Meet the Press," hosted by David Gregory, only to slide back this season to No. 3 in viewership behind CBS's "Face the Nation," starring Bob Schieffer.
This season, "This Week" has averaged about 2.7 million viewers weekly, trailing "Face the Nation" by just 90,000 people, while "Meet the Press" leads with 3.3 million a week, according to audience tracker Nielsen Co.
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