Tom Jicha says Jake Tapper is better-suited than Christiane Amanpour to host ABC News "This Week" -says move to her is a "mega mistake."; He's right!

I'm trying my best to catch-up here on the blog on a number of media-related news stories that I've noted and written some thoughts about over the past few months, but never quite gotten around to actually posting for one reason or another. Today is a start on pulling those stories out of the ink well and bringing them to your attention.

Curiously enough, on Friday, I saw that over at Tom Jicha's TV Plus blog at the Sun-Sentinel that he'd just written about one of those subjects: whether or not ABC News was making a big mistake by bringing in former CNN multi-tasker Christiane Amanpour to permanently host their "This Week" public policy/talking heads program on Sunday mornings, taking over the reins from interim host and ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper, who took over after George Stephanopoulos took over the duties at Good Morning America.
http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/

I'd written a number of what some friends thought were some pretty persuasive arguments about why the move could turn out rather quickly to be yet another in a long line of recent mistakes where the American pundit-ocracy and East Coast media had prematurely labeled someone or something they had a connection to or rooting interest in, a great success, long before the American people had gotten a chance to vote with their remote controls and emails.

Sun-Sentinel TV critic Tom Jicha took a more direct approach than me in his blog and has simply taken to describing the move to Amanpour as a "mega mistake."

He's right, of course, though for more reasons than he lets on in his piece.

It seems clear to me that no matter how poorly Amanpour does in the comparison with Stephanopoulos or Tapper, especially in her ability to move the show along and cut-off a guest or panel member going down a blind alley, her many loyal friends in the chattering class would never actually say it was a disaster in quite the same eager and enthusiastic way that they did with Campbell Brown's CNN show.

There, though Brown's been gone for what seems like forever, even while actual viewers have known for five weeks that she's heading out the door, CNN's graphics crawl at the bottom of the screen STILL invites us to be lovely and talented Campbell's Facebook friend. Frankly, that's been making me laugh for months on those occasions when I watch CNN at night, which are few and far-between. http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/cnn/campbell_browns_time_at_cnn_coming_to_a_close_165720.asp

As we get closer to Amanpour's coronation in August, I'll bring up my own points on why I think the move to her will prove less-than-satisfactory for American TV viewers living west of the Hudson, but for now, check-out what Jicha is saying.

-----

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

TV Plus blog

ABC should keep Tapper as host of This Week

by Tom Jicha

June 24th, 2010 3:23 PM

Each week brings a new reminder of the mega mistake ABC News is about to make bringing in Christiane Amanpour as the host of “This Week.”

Jake Tapper should have been the first choice and is demonstrarting weekly that he is the ideal choice. He keeps the show moving and is equally tough on representatives of both sides of the political spectrum.

Later, Jicha writes: Who knows if Amanpour is. Her perspective is global, always has been. This is not a character flaw. It could be said it is an attribute. But it is a negative for a program driven by domestic political discussions.
Read the rest of the post at: http://blogs.sun-sentinel.com/tv/2010/06/abc-should-keep-tapper-as-host-of-this-week.html