Amanpour will take over the anchor chair in August.
Many were surprised at the shift. All three Sunday network news shows are heavily focused on Washington insider talk and domestic political issues while Amanpour is famed for her international coverage and has never handled American domestic news.
But that appears to be one reason for the change-to shake things up. ABC News President David Westin said, “With Christiane, we have the opportunity to provide our audiences with something different on Sunday mornings.”
Ian Cameron, executive producer of “This Week,” agrees Amanpour may give the talk show a new focus, but says that will be a return to its roots. He said the show featured more world news decades ago when David Brinkley was the host, but the focus probably changed, he said, because polls showed American news viewers were less interested in international news.
“That will be our challenge,” Cameron said. “We’ll need to explain to our viewers why we’re doing these stories, why it’s connected to their lives and what it means to them.”
As to those who criticize Christiane’s novice knowledge of domestic subjects, Cameron said she will learn to be an expert just as she learned about the different conflicts she reported on for CNN.
Amanpour said, “I didn’t know about war until I started covering it.… I didn’t know about famine until I was in the middle of one.”
Amanpour is not an American citizen, a fact that has elicited no comment so far. She is a British-Iranian dual national. She and her American husband lived in London for most of the past decade before shifting to New York in 2008. Amanpour will commute to Washington from New York.
In her new ABC anchor seat, she and “This Week” will be measured against the number one Sunday talk show, NBC’s “Meet the Press,” hosted by David Gregory, and CBS’s “Face the Nation” with Bob Schieffer, which is in the number two position.
This season, an average of 2.7 million viewers have tuned into “This Week” every week, just 90,000 fewer than “Face the Nation.” Audience tracker Nielsen Co. said “Meet the Press” won by a large margin-3.3 million viewers a week.
CNN Worldwide President Jim Walton had nothing but accolades for his departing star. “Her work burnished our news brand and gave it authority. CNN and Christiane helped make each other great,” he said.
Amanpour has been seen less in recent years by CNN viewers in the United States as her main assignment has been a daily international news program shown only on CNN International, which isn’t broadcast in the United States.
ABC said Amanpour would not appear only on “This Week,” but would appear on other ABC News shows “to provide international analysis” and to anchor prime time documentaries on international topics.
The spot on “This Week” opened up when George Stephanopoulos, who worked in the Bill Clinton White House, left in December to co-host ABC’s “Good Morning America.” Since his departure, internal ABC candidates, such as Jake Tapper and Terry Moran, have filled in.
Amanpour’s father is Iranian and her mother is British. She was born in London, but the family moved to Tehran when she was an infant. She grew up bilingual. At age 11, she returned to England and boarding school. She came to the United States to attend college at the University of Rhode Island; a fellow housemate was John F. Kennedy Jr. After college she went to work for CNN in Atlanta. When she became a media star and could write her own ticket, she based herself in London.
In the 1990s, she met James Rubin, an American who was then the spokesman for the State Department. They married in a well-publicized wedding ceremony in 1998. They have one child, Darius, now 10. Amanpour said they decided to alternate living in Britain and America.