What a day it is for ABC’s Bob Woodruff.

His long-awaited interview with former John Edwards aide Andrew Young is set to air tonight on a special 20/20, and on Nightline.

It’s also Woodruff’s father’s birthday. Plus, Woodruff has a date this evening with his twin nine year-old girls at a father-daughter dance.

And it was on this day four years ago that Woodruff narrowly escaped death. “My ‘alive day’,” he tells TVNewser.

In 2006, the newly-minted World News Tonight co-anchor was reporting from Iraq when a roadside bomb exploded near him and cameraman Doug Vogt. Both suffered serious head injuries. Four years later, Woodruff is feeling good — “I’m lucky,” he says — and he’s right in the thick of things at work.

He has nabbed some of the biggest gets in the Edwards-Rielle Hunter saga, including an exclusive interview with the former Senator and presidential candidate in August of 2008. During that chat, Edwards lied about the possibility of fathering Hunter’s daughter, Quinn.

“I was pretty shocked” at the denial, Woodruff says. And so were Andrew Young — author of The Politician, out tomorrow — and his wife Cheri, who Woodruff says were “just irritated and furious” at what they heard. They chose Woodruff for their first interview.

Woodruff, who covered Edwards’ 2004 presidential run, finds it hard to believe he’s still covering this scandal, long after the now-infamous 2008 sit-down. “I didn’t think it would be such a big story a year and half later.”

But it is. So big that each network has scrambled for the scoop. Last week, with Woodruff’s Andrew Young interview looming, NBC got an exclusive of its own: a first look at the statement from Edwards admitting paternity.

Woodruff shrugs it off. “I love competition. Go for it, NBC!”

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Next Friday, ABC’s “20/20″ airs a Bob Woodruff interview with former aide to John Edwards, Andrew Young, who is releasing a tell-all called “The Politician.”

But this morning, NBC News stole some of that thunder by getting an exclusive statement from Edwards admitting that he’s the father of a 2-year-old daughter conceived with Rielle Hunter, a campaign videographer with whom he had an affair.

In a written statement provided first to NBC News, the former North Carolina senator and Democratic presidential candidate writes, “I am Quinn’s father.”

In her story on “Today,” NBC’s Lisa Myers got an on-camera interview with Edwards’ close friend Harrison Hickman: “I am speaking for the senator to the extent that anyone can,” says Hickman.

> More: Not to be outdone, ABC News is reporting this morning that Young was asked by Edwards to steal a diaper to secretly check his paternity.

> More, More: While NBC had the statement first, with enough time for Myers to produce a story, the Edwards camp was having it both ways, making sure all the networks had the statement for the lead on the morning newscasts.

HDNet anchor Dan Rather joined a panel of activists and journalists at the Paley Center for Media to discuss the coming together of the two in 1965. As Rather and the others posed for pictures in the Dan Rather Gallery outside the theater, we caught up with the moderator for the panel, Paley Center president and CEO Pat Mitchell.

“It’s going to be a busy week,” she said — Mitchell will be inducted into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame tonight.

Sitting on the panel were Amb. Andrew Young, Rep. John Lewis and Diane Nash on the activist side, and the journalist crew of Rather, former NBC correspondent Richard Valeriani, Haynes Johnson and Nick Kotz.

Some of the talk revolved around the role between the movement and the press at the time. Young said the press “was on our side,” while Lewis thought they were a “sympathetic referee.” Rather described the role as, “honest brokers of information.”

But there certainly was some collaboration. Young recalls a time when Valeriani told him, “If you want this on the evening news, you’ve got to be through with the demonstration by Noon so we can have it on a plane by 1:00.” Part of the reason for that early time was because local affiliates sometimes refused to feed the footage or “lost” the film.

Rather was on the ground as well, as his first CBS News assignment was, “to cover the civil rights movement, and get as close to Dr. King as possible.”

Johnson, a print reporter, credits TV as bringing about change. “Without that red light there, we wouldn’t have that outpouring,” he said. But also: “This was a great story.”

And, click continued to see one of the futuristic pieces of technology at the Paley Center…

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