ABC

Liz Claman is the latest Fox anchor to make a guest appearance on ABC’s “This Week.” The Fox Business Network anchor will join the roundtable on Sunday. A few weeks ago, Greta Van Susteren went on the show. And perhaps the most prominent Fox News appearance on ABC’s “This Week” came a couple years ago, when Roger Ailes was a guest as Barbara Walters filled in as moderator.

Of all cross-network talent bookings, ABC and Fox News share the most. Bill O’Reilly appearing on “The View” or “Good Morning America,” can be as common as Walters or Diane Sawyer turning up on “The O’Reilly Factor”.

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Former CBS and NBC News anchor Katie Couric has extended an “open invitation” to Fox News contributor ad former Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin to appear on her upcoming daytime talk show.

The Orlando Sentinel‘s Hal Boedeker caught up with Couric as she made some publicity rounds in the Florida city:

“She has an open invitation to come talk to me,” Couric said during a stop Monday in Orlando. “I’m not sure she’d be interested, but she’d certainly be welcome. She’s a fascinating figure not only on the political scene but in popular culture.”

It was Couric’s interview of Palin–featuring the new infamous “What newspapers do you read?” question–that made international news during the 2008 Presidential campaign.

Since that time there has been no love lost between Couric and Palin. When Couric guest-anchored “Good Morning America” a few weeks ago, Palin guest-hosted on rival “Today.”

John Schriffen is joining ABC News as a New York-based correspondent, president Ben Sherwood announced this morning.

Schriffen joins ABC after two months as a freelance reporter for WCBS, the CBS-owned local station in New York City. Prior to that, he was a general assignment reporter for WRC, the NBC-owned station in Washington, DC. He will report across all ABC’s platforms.

Schriffen “brings great energy, creativity and competitiveness to his journalism,” Sherwood wrote in a memo to ABC staffers (read it after the jump).

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ABC News is launching the ABC News Fellowship program to attract and develop journalists from diverse backgrounds.

Participants of the year-long fellowship, sought from “a variety of racial, ethnic, socio-economic and geographic backgrounds,” will rotate through the editorial, production, and newsgathering areas while working with an ABC News mentor.

“ABC News is committed to recruiting, developing, empowering and promoting our industry’s future leaders,” said ABC News president Ben Sherwood.

Go here if you’d like to apply. The paid fellowships begin July 2.

In advance of her interview with Princes William and Harry, and ABC’s coverage of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebration, ABC’s Katie Couric had a chance to meet the women of the hour herself, Queen Elizabeth II.

Diane Sawyer spoke to Couric on “ABC World News,” where she relayed the experience of meeting the Royal.

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Over his 13 years as ABC News president, David Westin says his biggest regret was in not heeding Peter Jennings’ skepticism about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

“We had all sorts of sources — reliable sources — telling us they were there, absolutely,” says Westin, whose memoir, Exit Interview (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), hits the stands today.

Jennings was not convinced, according to Westin. “I said to him, more than once, ‘No matter what happens, if the U.S. goes in there, they will find WMDs.’ Peter would say, ‘Don’t be so sure.’”

Despite his anchor’s deep expertise in the Middle East, Westin, like most news organizations in the free world, went with the party line. In retrospect, “I wish we’d dropped everything, assigned more people and pushed harder,” he says. “We’d all be better off.”

Westin was at the helm for numerous historic events during his 1997-to-2010 run at ABC – an extraordinary tenure in the modern news era. Behind the scenes, he spent much of his time trying to balance corporate’s demand for more profit with the needs of a world-class news operation.

It was a tough balancing act, even for someone who kept his eye on nine TV monitors on his office wall.

“An important part of my job was to remind the news division it was a business, and we had to be mindful about how we spent our money,” Westin, 59, says. “I also reminded corporate [Disney] that news was more than a business. We made decisions regularly because it was the right thing to do.”

In February 2010, the right thing to do, corporate-wise, was to cut the news division’s 1,500-person staff by a whopping twenty-five percent, mostly through buyouts. It was an ugly day for Westin.

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General James Cartwright (USMC ret., pictured left) and General Peter Chiarelli (USA ret., pictured right) have joined ABC News as military consultants, president Ben Sherwood announced today.

Cartwright served as Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2007-11, in both the Bush and Obama administrations. Prior to that, he served as Commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, overseeing the U.S. nuclear arsenal and missile defense systems. He served for more than 40 years in the U.S. Marine Corps.

Chiarelli is a retired U.S. Army general who served as the Army’s Vice Chief of Staff from 2008-12. He is a former senior military assistant to Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

In a memo welcoming the pair, Sherwood praised the network’s “ deeply experienced and knowledgeable team of military experts with many decades of service to the country and valuable insights into national security threats and issues.”

Read the full memo after the jump.

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As TVNewser reported back in April, Josh Elliott and Lara Spencer will anchor an early-afternoon spinoff of ABC’s “Good Morning America” called, appropriately, “Good Afternoon America.” ABC says Robin Roberts, Sam Champion and George Stephanopoulos will also appear on the program occasionally.

The program will start Monday, July 9 at 2 PM ET and run for nine weeks over the Summer. It is serving essentially as Summer filler, though Brian Stelter notes that if it does well, ABC could certainly find a place for it in its schedule. In the Fall, a number of new syndicated shows are launching, including “Katie,” anchored by Katie Couric.

“GAA” sounds very similar to “GMA,” but with more of a focus on lifestyle and entertainment news, according to an ABC description:

The energetic, fast-paced program will feature the most-talked about celebrities, performances by the biggest names in the music industry, the latest pop culture news plus offer original entertainment, lifestyle, health, workplace and consumer reporting from an all-star list of contributors and other members of the ABC family

More, including quotes from Elliott and Spencer, after the jump.

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ABC News’ senior foreign affairs correspondent Martha Raddatz is in Yemen this week, delivering a series of “Inside the Terror Zone” reports that will air across all the network’s news platforms.

The series kicked off on “World News” last night. This morning, more than 70 Yemeni soldiers were killed in a suicide bombing in Sana’a, where Raddatz is reporting from. She appeared with the breaking news on today’s “Good Morning America”:

As TVNewser first reported over the weekend, NBC News anchor and correspondent Amy Robach is joining ABC News as a correspondent, based in New York.

“In her new role, Amy will contribute her engaging and  high-impact journalism to all of our broadcasts and platforms,” wrote ABC News president Ben Sherwood in a memo to staff this morning.

Robach, who officially announced her departure on Saturday’s edition of “Weekend Today,” also appeared on this morning’s show to once again say good bye to the “Today” team.

Sherwood’s memo to staff about Robach, after the jump.

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