Weekend Editions
The first weekend edition of GMA aired on Sundays only from January 3, 1993, to February 28, 1999, hosted by Willow Bay, Aaron Brown, John Hockenberry, Dana King, Lisa McRee, Antonio Mora, Kevin Newman and Bill Ritter.
ABC found that it needed to start a weekend edition of the program after several incidents between 2001 and 2003 where the network was the last to break news because of its commitment to airing the ABC Kids block on Saturday mornings, the most-serious incident being the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, where the network had to balance the need of breaking the tragic news with the cartoons and teen sitcoms being aired for a young audience while the news broke and federal E/I requirements. The network's affiliates were disappointed in ABC News not providing full coverage, and had to depend on feeds from CNN and APTN News.
The current version debuted September 4, 2004 with Bill Weir and Kate Snow as co-anchors, Ron Claiborne as the news anchor and Marysol Castro as the weather anchor. Castro also reported on a wide range of subjects from lifestyle trends to breaking news and entertainment. In March 2010, Kate Snow left GMA Weekend for NBC News. Various female personalities of ABC News filled in as co-anchor following her departure. It was not until two months later in May 2010 that Bianna Golodryga officially succeeded Snow as the new weekend co-anchor. In August 2010, Bill Weir left GMA Weekend for the network’s late-night news program Nightline. His former seat was officially taken over by Dan Harris in October 2010. A month following Weir’s departure, Marysol Castro left the show. After her departure, meteorologists from various ABC affiliates across the country step in to give the weather report. It was not until over a year later, in November 2011, that the weather anchor position was filled by Ginger Zee, coming from the NBC owned-and-operated station in Chicago. As of early November 2011, Ron Claiborne is the only original cast member remaining from the inception of the current version of GMA Weekend in 2004.
The start time for the Saturday and Sunday editions of GMA vary between ABC affiliates, though the standard timeslot for the program is the same as its weekday editions at 7 a.m. in all time zones, and most ABC affiliates air the Saturday edition of GMA immediately before the Litton Weekend Adventure block and the Sunday edition before This Week. Many ABC stations also air a weekend morning newscast immediately after (and in some cases, before) the weekend editions of Good Morning America, this has become fairly common since ABC ceded one hour of its Saturday morning children's program lineup and turned it over to its affiliates in August 2010.
World News Now co-anchor Paula Faris subbed for Golodryga while she was on maternity leave in the spring of 2012.
On the weekend of September 15, 2012, the current weekend edition of GMA topped the weekend edition of Today in the ratings for the first time ever.
Read more about this topic: Good Morning America
Famous quotes containing the words weekend and/or editions:
“Weekend planning is a prime time to apply the Deathbed Priority Test: On your deathbed, will you wish you’d spent more prime weekend hours grocery shopping or walking in the woods with your kids?”
—Louise Lague (20th century)
“The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St. Paul’s, like the editions of Balbec and Palmyra.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)