Who

A 30-year ABC News veteran, Gibson is the anchor of the network's nightly newscast, World News with Charles Gibson.

Backstory

A native of Evanston, Ill., Gibson grew up in Washington, D.C. and started his media career in college working as news director of the Princeton radio station. Following a short stint in radio, Gibson joined a syndicated television news service and covered the Watergate scandal and President Nixon's resignation from office. In 1975 Gibson moved to ABC News, where he covered the White House and Capitol Hill, before joining World News Tonight as a reporter a few years later. He landed the job of co-anchor of Good Morning America in 1987, and stayed with GMA off and on until 2006. Following Peter Jennings's death, and a short-lived experiment in which Bob Woodruff and Elizabeth Vargas hosted the evening newscast, Gibson took over as anchor of World News Tonight in 2006.

Of note

Gibson initially turned down the World News Tonight anchor position when it was offered to him by ABC News president David Westin, reportedly because the deal only came with a two-year contract. Westin was uneasy about offering the job to the other likely contender, Diane Sawyer—apparently he was convinced that poaching Sawyer for the evening newscast would take the steam out of Good Morning America. Westin made the unusual move of awarding the job to Elizabeth Vargas and Bob Woodruff, two more youthful figures at the network, as part of an effort to freshen up the dowdy format. But just a month after the pair took over, Woodruff was critically wounded in Iraq, leaving Vargas as sole anchor, and the next day she announced that she was pregnant. Vargas was soon sent packing—the party line was that she couldn't handle the job given her pregnancy, although others say that Gibson, who was subbing for Woodruff, threatened to quit if he didn't get the sole anchor slot—and in May 2006, the old-school newsman was officially named anchor of the newscast.

He's been surprisingly successful since then, which must come as some vindication now that he's in the 11th hour of his career. Although ABC had consistently trailed NBC's Brian Williams in the ratings, Gibson managed to pull ahead for the first time in February 2007, and has been running neck and neck with Williams. Gibson's glory days will probably be short-lived: He's expected to stay in his current job only until the end of the 2008 election cycle.

For the record

When Gibson anchored GMA, he was referred to as "Charlie." Now that he's anchoring the more serious nightly news, he goes by "Charles."

Personal

Gibson's wife, Arlene, was previously head of the Upper East Side private school Spence. They have two children, Jessica and Katherine. The Gibsons have an apartment on East End Avenue and a vacation home in Park City, Utah.