Greeting America and the world each morning – along with his longtime co-host Joan Lunden – on the weekly staple, "Good Morning, America" (ABC, 1975- ), had been the duty of the avuncular Charlie Gibson since January of 1987. Coming from a news background, he handled many of the harder news interviews for the program, which flip- flopped with NBC's "The Today Show" (1952- ) for ratings supremacy in the early morning hours. He was so revered both by his network and the public at large, that after the premature death of beloved "ABC World News Tonight" (1953- ) anchor Peter Jennings in 2005,