Maybe, just maybe, Elizabeth Vargas imagined Monday’s WNT announcement nine years ago.
“If (ABC bosses) have bigger things in store for me, that would be great. But it’s not going to happen for a while,” she told the Boston Herald on July 24, 1996, two months after she joined Good Morning America as a newsreader.
At the time, she was talking about becoming co-host of GMA — and ironically, if she had succeeded Joan Lunden on the morning show, her sidekick would have been Charlie Gibson.
But that’s not where the irony stops. Vargas ended up at ABC, at least in part, because NBC refused to promise her Katie Couric‘s seat on the Today Show. That’s right — Vargas wanted to be the next Gibson or Couric. (Now you REALLY want Katie to anchor on CBS, don’t you?)
Read all the details in an “unofficial biography” of Vargas after the jump…
After four years at Chicago’s WBBM, Vargas jumped to NBC News in 1993, as a correspondent for Dateline NBC and a sub anchor for Today.
But in contract renegotiations in 1996, Vargas was wanted assurance that she would be the “eventual successor to Katie Couric,” according to an NBC source (John Carmody, WP, Feb. 12, 1996). Instead, NBC offered her a continued Dateline assignment and the permanent Weekend Today chair.
In Feb. 1996, NBC News broke off negotiations with Vargas, freeing her to talk to ABC and CBS. Three months later, she joined GMA. (In her first weeks, a toucan bit her on the arm during a segment.)
That year, Roone Arledge told Newsweek that Vargas was Joan Lunden’s likely “heir apparent” on Good Morning America. “Elizabeth would be an idiot if she didn’t want my job,” Lunden told USA Today at the time.
But there was a spate of bad press about Vargas. “Her peers began to talk openly about what had only been whispered before, stories of temperament and vanity” (Liz Smith, SF Chronicle, June 30, 1997). TV Guide printed excepts of a memo about her alleged star perks. “She doesn’t want to be there if you’re shooting B-roll,” it said. “Assume that she will be running a bit late (15-30 minutes)” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 12, 1997).
Vargas denied the diva treatment and said the piece “hung on one anonymous quote from a network that I had just turned down and that had tried very hard to keep me,” Vargas said (Boston Herald, July 24, 1996).
In June 1997, ABC elevated Vargas to primetime magazine show correspondent. She was also named anchor of WNT Saturday, and presented with the opportunity to develop specials for primetime (Houston Chronicle, June 27, 1997).
In 1999, USA Today reported that execs at CBS and CBS were eyeing Vargas for a “co-anchor morning role,” but the talks never materialized.
And the rest is history. In November 2003, Vargas became anchor of WNT Sunday (TV Week, Nov. 24, 2003). But that didn’t last for long: She was named co-anchor of 20/20 in May 2004 (MediaWeek.com, May 18, 2004)…