Entertainment Tonight went behind the scenes of “Good Morning America” earlier this week. Have you ever wanted to know where Josh Elliott hides his Grape Nuts? Watch, and ye shall see.

ABC’s “Nightline” posted its best Total Viewer ratings since moving to the 12:35 a.m timeslot for the week of May 6.

“Nightline” topped “The Late Late Show” on CBS by +476,000 Total Viewers and “Late Night” on NBC by +11,000 Total Viewers during the second week of the May sweep. “Nightline” was second to “Late Night” in both A25-54 and A18-49 viewers.

The ABC show improved on its prior week performance by +14% in Total Viewers, +4% in A25-54 viewers and +14% in A18-49 viewers.

ABC’s ratings are based on a 25-minute broadcast, while CBS and NBC are based on approximately :50 minutes (prior to the final national commercial break of each program).

• Week of May 6, 2013:

Show	Network	Total Viewers	A25-54	A18-49
Nightline	ABC	1.779M	715K	582K
Late Night	NBC	1.768M	823K	689K
Late Late Show	ABC	1.303M	630K	472K

As Barbara Walters gears up for her retirement next year, television critics are beginning to weigh in on the legacy she leaves behind in television. The New York Times’ Alessandra Stanley calls Walters “television personified”:

Intuitively, knowingly or just luckily, Ms. Walters has moved — and is moving — in concert with tastes and audiences and real influence. She defected from nighttime to daytime just as many viewers were doing the same … And now, as more and more viewers leave broadcast television altogether, so does she.

Salon’s Mary Elizabeth Williams praises Walters for being first in “nearly everything about women in television news”:

And if television news is still frequently a hollow, sexist echo chamber, don’t blame Barbara. She showed everything that’s possible for a woman of brains and ambition in an industry that has little use for women with either.

Williams’ Salon colleague Alex Pareene takes the opposing viewpoint, calling Walters’ career “an extended exercise in sycophancy and unalloyed power worship”: Read more

When a media outlet becomes the news, it’s interesting to watch how other media outlets cover the story. At issue today, the Justice Department admitting it secretly recorded phone conversations of five AP reporters and an editor. It was a big story on all the morning shows. (We already told you about the reaction on “Morning Joe” from the AP’s executive editor.) On “CBS This Morning” Bob Orr called it “a very aggressive investigation.” On the “Today” show Pete Williams called it “an unusually broad government effort.” But on “Good Morning America,” Fox News host Bill O’Reilly said this may be the least of Pres. Obama’s worries.

“I don’t think that’s going to amount to much,” O’Reilly said of the phone taps. “It looks like they went through the warrant process and they had authorization to look at these records — the Justice Department did. But president Obama, he’s got some problems now. He better start to get control of the situation because there’s a lot of stuff going on.”

As expected, ABC’s Barbara Walters announced her retirement on “The View” today. The show kicked off with Walters introducing a brief career retrospective, followed by her formal announcement:

“I have been on television–continuously–for over 50 years,” Walters said. “But in the Summer of 2014, a year from now, I plan to retire from appearing on television at all. It has been an absolutely joyful, rewarding, challenging, fascinating and occasionally bumpy ride, and I wouldn’t change a thing. I am perfectly healthy, this is my decision and I have been thinking about it for a long time. This is what I want to do.”

The audience in “The View” studio was filled with executives, including ABC News president Ben Sherwood (“Not only the best president of a news division but also the tallest,” Walters joked), ABC executive VP Vicki Dummer, ABC entertainment president Paul Lee, Disney-ABC TV group president Anne Sweeney and Disney CEO Bob Iger, who shared the story of when he first met Walters back in 1976.

He was a production assistant, and was asked to bring something to Walters’ dressing room. He wasn’t expecting her to be there, but she was, and she was very kind to him.

“From then on you called me Jim, my name is Bob,” he quipped, adding more seriously:

Read more

Photo: David Muir/ABC News

ABC News lost one of its own on Sunday, as veteran audio engineer Trevor Barker passed away at age 59. Barker, based in South Africa, worked with Peter Jennings, Diane Sawyer, David Wright, Terry Moran and David Muir, among many others over his career at ABC.

Barker traveled the world for the network, covering genocide and revolution in Africa, to the election of the new Pope just earlier this year.

“I first met him in Jabul Saraj, Afghanistan, in 2001 when he joined me in the long wait for Kabul to fall,” said Wright, who worked with Barker last March in Rome for the election of Pope Francis, in a statement. “Even then, he was like Crocodile Dundee with a sound kit, a grizzled veteran who with good humor and steady nerves made tough experiences easier on novice war correspondents like me.”

You can see an ABC News video tribute to Barker here.

ABC News anchor Barbara Walters is making it official: she will be retiring in 2014. We reported that Walters was set to retire in 2014 back in March (reporting which Walters tiptoed around), but now it is a done deal. Walters is expected to address her retirement on “The View” Monday.

Walters will retire from her on-camera duties at both ABC News and “The View” in the Summer of 2014, with a number of specials leading up to her retirement, including a career retrospective, a 20 years of “10 Most Fascinating” special and an Oscars special. She will remain as EP of “The View,” which she co-created.

“I am very happy with my decision and look forward to a wonderful and special year ahead both on ‘The View’ and with ABC News,” Walters says in a statement. “I created ‘The View’ and am delighted it will last beyond my leaving it.”

Walters is a TV legend, shattering glass ceilings and becoming one of the first TV news anchors to become truly public figures. She began her career at NBC’s “Today” in 1961, joining ABC News in what was a blockbuster deal in 1976.

“There’s only one Barbara Walters,” says ABC News President Ben Sherwood in a statement. “And we look forward to making her final year on television as remarkable, path-breaking and news-making as Barbara herself. Barbara will always have a home at ABC News and we look forward to a year befitting her brilliant career, filled with exclusive interviews, great adventures and indelible memories.”

Earlier this year Walters had a health scare after taking a fall in the British Ambassador’s residence, only to discover that she had contracted chicken pox. The illness kept her off of ABC and “The View” for a few months, and she returned in early March.

ABC News chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross and three investigative producers were presented with the 2013 Hillman Prize for Broadcast Journalism this week. Ross and Rhonda Schwartz, Matthew Mosk and Cindy Galli were honored for a series of reports on safety conditions at factories in Bangladesh which aired last year on “World News” and “Nightline.”

It is the second Hillman Prize on this topic for Ross and Schwartz. The pair won in 1992 for their reporting on NBC’s “Dateline” exposing conditions at factories used by Wal-Mart.

“We won a Hillman award for that work, and while it is a great honor to win it again at ABC News — is a true outrage that people continue to die in Bangladesh making clothes for the US market,” Ross tells TVNewser. “Sewing garments is not, and should not be, an inherently dangerous occupation, but it continues to be in Bangladesh.”

Eight people were killed Wednesday in a fire at a garment factory in Bangladesh. ABC News reports that the SEIU is joining public protests against Gap Inc. planned for this weekend over the dangerous working conditions in the country.

Don Ennis spent his last day at ABC News last week. But Friday morning, Dawn Ennis returned to the network, got her new ID (left) and went back to work at the assignment desk.

Ennis, a former local TV news producer, who’s has also had stints at CNN, CNBC and the “Today” show, has come out as transgender.

“Please understand: This is not a game of dress-up, or make-believe. It is my affirmation of who I now am and what I must do to be happy, in response to a soul-crushing secret that my wife and I have been dealing with for more than seven years, mostly in secret,” Ennis wrote on Facebook Friday.

“I have spent years fighting this, trying through dozens of tests and sheer willpower to overcome what doctors cannot cure nor reverse, or even satisfactorily explain. The New York Post says Ennis is shopping a book deal, which would delve into what may be behind the change:

Ennis said she suffers from an “unusual hormonal imbalance,” and blames her mother, who fed her female hormones as a child to prolong a commercial acting career. The hormones made the little boy look and sound young, but Ennis said she eventually developed breasts.

(GLAAD released a statement last night about the Post’s reporting, saying, “There was a bit of an overemphasis on clothing and appearance, but no incorrect pronouns were used, there were no jokes made at Ennis’ expense, and no anti-trans slurs in the headline – all things that have been hallmarks of the Post’s transgender coverage in the past.)

Ennis, 49, and a father of three, is now separated from her wife of 17 years.

Read more

Three women, missing for years, and presumed gone forever. A dramatic rescue, with a very–memorable–rescuer.

For TV news bookers, particularly those on the network morning shows, it is a dream come true. The surprising story broke late last night out of Cleveland, as Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight were freed, with some help by Charles Ramsey, whose 911 call and interviews spread around the Internet like wildfire.

One morning show source says that “the race is on” to try and book the girls, as well as Ramsey, who may require a seven second delay should he appear in a live interview.

On TV last night, the story played out primarily on CNN, which covered it almost non-stop since it broke in the 8 PM hour. CNN ended up going live until 1 AM covering the story. Fox News first broke in at 9:47 Pm during “Hannity, and continued covering it during the 10 PM hour with “On the Record”, with MSNBC also providing some coverage during “The Last Word,” according to TvEyes.

This morning the story led the morning shows, and is dominating the coverage on cable news.

After the jump, video of an interview with Ramsey conducted by the local ABC affiliate.
Read more