Milestones

STEPPING DOWN

Longtime ABC newsman Charles Gibson is signing off. The World News anchor announced Sept. 2 that Diane Sawyer will replace him in January, making Brian Williams of NBC's Nightly News the lone male anchor on the Big Three evening broadcasts. Gibson, who joined ABC as a Capitol Hill reporter in 1975, never expected to preside over the network's flagship news program. He was nearing the twilight of his career when a chain of unexpected developments--Peter Jennings' death in 2005, the head injury Bob Woodruff sustained in Iraq in 2006 and Elizabeth Vargas' pregnancy later that year--thrust him into the anchor's chair. He acquitted himself well, landing the first major TV interview with vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin--a triumph that earned his newscast nearly 2 million more viewers than its closest rival. In an e-mail to colleagues, Gibson wrote that his proudest moments were simply uttering the phrase "for all of us at ABC News ..."