David Westin resigned as president of ABC News after 13 years, saying he will seek opportunities outside of the Walt Disney Co. network.
Westin, 57, will stay on through year-end while a replacement is sought, according to an e-mail he sent to staffers and posted on the ABC News website yesterday.
“There are some other things I want to do professionally,” Westin said without elaborating. “I’m announcing my decision now so that I can pursue those possibilities.”
A decline in viewership has put pressure on network news operations to curtail spending and find other ways to maintain profit. In February, Westin announced a restructuring of the ABC News workforce, increasing the reliance on freelance journalists and having staffers shoot and edit more of their own material.
“There has been, during his tenure at ABC News, a huge upheaval in how people, particularly young people, get their news,” said Brad Adgate, director of research at New York-based advertising firm Horizon Media Inc. “To keep the news division as a viable department at ABC, he did a very credible job. But, that said, he was never able to quite surpass NBC.”
NBC slashed newsroom jobs in 2006 and increased resource- sharing with NBC Universal cable-channel siblings MSNBC and CNBC. CBS hired Katie Couric the same year in a bid to boost ratings for “CBS Evening News.”
“NBC Nightly News” has the highest-rated evening news broadcast with 8.58 million viewers on average since September 2009, according to data provided by Nielsen Co.
CBS, CNN
“ABC World News” is second, averaging 7.58 million viewers. “CBS Evening News” is last among the networks with an average of 5.73 million viewers.
“He couldn’t really overcome NBC’s dominance,” Adgate said in an interview. “The gap would close once in a while and they’d get close to NBC and the gap would widen.”
CBS News and Time Warner Inc.’s CNN have talked about partnerships and there are reasons for the companies to work together, CBS Corp. Chief Executive Officer Leslie Moonves said in May.
Westin oversees ABC’s television and radio network news, including the evening broadcast, “Good Morning America” and “This Week With Christiane Amanpour.” In December, Westin replaced “World News” anchor Charles Gibson with Diane Sawyer.
“For the past 13 years, David Westin proved himself a tireless advocate for ABC News,” Anne Sweeney, co-chair of Disney Media Networks, said in an e-mailed statement. He has “positioned us for great success going forward.”
ABC’s Drop
ABC was the only major network to have a drop in overall prime-time viewers last season and also was down in the 18-to- 49-year-old group that advertisers seek, according to Nielsen.
For the nine months ended July 3, Disney’s broadcast revenue rose 3 percent to $4.4 billion, the company said on Aug. 10. Operating income increased 2 percent to $512 million.
Disney, the world’s largest media company, fell 83 cents to $33.84 at 4:15 p.m. in New York
Stock Exchange composite trading. Shares of the Burbank, California-based company have risen 4.9 percent this year.
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