In 1960, ABC launched its first Sunday talk showIssues and Answers, which featured policy discussions, prior to the age of political pundits dominating the talk shows. One of its early hosts was Howard K. Smith, who also had his own prime-time public affairs program air on the network during the 1962–1963 season. Among the program's later hosts was Bob Clark. On November 15, 1981, David Brinkley came to the network from NBC News and was given full responsibility for the show, which was relaunched as This Week with a network time slot at 10:30 AM Eastern Time. During Brinkley's run, three major sponsors were part of the show: General Electric, Archer Daniels Midland and Merrill Lynch. On November 10, 1996, David Brinkley retired as host of This Week but continued to appear on the program providing commentary segments until September 1997. Following Brinkley's retirement, ABC News journalists Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts subsequently became co-hosts of This Week. Since 1981, the names of the primary anchors have been included with the show's title, such as This Week with David Brinkley and during this era, the program was billed as This Week with Sam & Cokie. Longtime panelist George Stephanopoulos became the new host of This Week on September 15, 2002; he ended his first tenure with the program on January 10, 2010, shortly after being named the co-host of Good Morning America. ABC News Senior White House CorrespondentJake Tapper served as the interim anchor from March to July 2010. Christiane Amanpour, a longtime world affairs correspondent at CNN, began as the program's host on August 1, 2010. During her first two months as host, the ratings for This Week reached their lowest point since 2003. In December 2011, it was announced that Amanpour would step down as anchor of the program, while returning to CNN in turn. On January 5, 2012, ABC News announced that Stephanopoulos would return as the host of This Week. With the return of Stephanopolous as moderator, the program began using former Good Morning America and World News Tonight anchor Charles Gibson to perform the voice-over heard during the opening of each broadcast; this lasted until 2014. In 2016, Martha Raddatz was named co-anchor of This Week, alternating each weekend with Stephanopoulos.
Key features
One of the key features of This Week is the roundtable, which included pundits such as George Will and ABC News correspondents such as Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts, and other guests discussing the major issues of the week. Will, a regular panelist who was with the program from its launch with David Brinkley until he left ABC to join Fox News as a contributor in 2013, sometimes contributed short reports to the broadcast. Other key features include the Sunday Funnies, excerpts of jokes from late night talk and sketch comedy programs of the previous week; and In Memoriam, a selection of prominent deaths from politics, business and culture, and a listing of all reported military deaths from that week. On April 20, 2008, production of This Week relocated to the Newseum in Washington D.C., in a studio that overlooks the U.S. Capitol. In addition, the program began broadcasting in high definition, becoming the first Sunday morning talk show to broadcast in HD. Following the transition, the program discontinued the segments "Voices" and "Images". ABC and This Week moved out of the Newseum in 2013 due to infrequent use of the studio and other facilities, with the former studio later being used for the Washington bureau of cable news channel Al Jazeera America. In February 2009, the ratings gap between Meet the Press and its competitors – This Week and CBS' Face the Nation – began closing. Meet the Press posted its lowest ratings since NBC News correspondent David Gregory became moderator in early February of that year, with the February 1 telecast averaging just 3.9 million viewers. Face the Nation averaged 3.33 million total viewers, while This Week came in just behind with 3.32 million. This Week beat Meet the Press on January 11, when George Stephanopoulos interviewed President-Elect Barack Obama. In 2010, Jake Tapper arranged with Bill Adair to get PolitiFact.com to fact check the statements made by panelists and guests featured on This Week.
