sarah · dessen

Regular readers of this blog know that I am a fan of Good Morning America. Okay, it's more like obsessed. I mean, look at my face in this picture:

So if you are a Today or Early show zealot, you might want to skip this entry. I will not be offended, promise.

Okay, so I LOVE Diane Sawyer. Which is why I am somewhat devastated (if you can be somewhat devastated) that she's leaving the show at the end of this year to take over World News Tonight. Don't get me wrong: I know this is a great thing for Diane. It's like the golden ring of broadcasting, and she totally deserves it. Not to mention that I watch World News every night, so it's not like I won't be seeing her.

But I've been watching the Morning Fab Four for years now. And I hate to think of them getting broken up.

(This is not the greatest picture, I know. But I am writing this while my daughter is temporarily distracted, so time is of the essence.)

I have to be honest. When they first put this group together, I was all about Diane and Robin. But I quickly developed a huge thing for Sam Champion as well. Chris Cuomo....well, at first I wasn't so sure. See, I look at GMA kind of like high school. (This is a pitfall of being a YA writer, I think. You see everything in terms of high school.) Anyway, if Diane is the all-around gorgeous achiever, Robin is the tomboy who is friends with everyone in every possible clique. Sam is the funny guy who sits behind you in art class and you never really want to date, necessarily, but have more fun with than just about anyone else. And Chris, initially to me, was the jock. You know the type. The guy who is kind of swaggering, and sits in the back of the bus picking on people and it's funny, as long as it's not you. I think I felt this way because I thought he teased Sam a lot in the early days, and it bugged me. Plus the cool-but-kind-of-mean jock was pretty much my LEAST favorite person in high school.

Then, though, something happened. I think it was around when they did this segment about facing fears. Diane walked on coals, Sam did something with bees, and I think Robin's had to do with flying, I'm not sure. Chris admitted to a serious fear of heights. Which, alone, was very non-jock on the back on the bus. Then, he did a bungee jump off the side of a huge building. And as I watched him, as he got ready to do it, I saw this total fear and vulnerability that made me like him. Okay, maybe love him.

And as I started to follow him on Twitter, and watch him more often, I saw that he was not at ALL what I'd originally thought. He's, like, a total sap. He tears up talking about his kids, he gets totally geared up doing segments about people being screwed by The Man (insurance companies, big business, etc) and he admits that his mom always says he eats too much during the cooking segments. He gardens and loves to fish. In short, he won me over. Big time.

Which is why, when I read in the paper yesterday that they're making a decision next month about who will replace Diane, all I could think was it had to be Chris. It HAS to be. What are they going to do, bring in someone new? If so, how weird will that be? They moved Robin up to co-anchor when Charlie left, now they should move Chris up and put someone else in the news reader position. Not that anyone's asking me, but I'd suggest Kate Snow, or JuJu Chang, or, ABC, if you're feeling kind of daring, what about Bianna Golodryga? She's insanely smart, will bring in the younger set, and pretty much drop dead gorgeous to boot. I mean, look:

Plus, when she walked by in the hallway, when I was in the makeup room at GMA with JuJu Chang, she smiled at me. And she TOTALLY didn't have to do that. Consider me convinced.

All right, so I just read this entry over again and I sound like a total psycho. Which is not really new, except I'm usually going on about Friday Night Lights or coffee. Oh, well. It's worth it if even ONE person who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone at ABC sees this and passes it on. One entirely too devoted fan's opinion. Give Chris the job. I mean, can Matt Lauer do this?


I didn't think so.

Have a good day, everyone!