Though it’s been more than three years since Amy Chiaro (left) left NBC’s ‘Weekend Today’ for the syndicated ‘Dr. Oz,’ she still creates a cold open in her mind of headlines for that day’s network morning shows — before she watches them.

“It’s a sickness that stays with you,” she says with a chuckle. “It was very, very hard for me to leave NBC.”

Chiaro, 39, says she has no regrets. Promoted in December to executive producer of ‘Dr. Oz,’ she oversees a staff of about 100. “I’m very happy here, and I plan to be here for a long time. When you’ve been part of something from the beginning, it’s different. Now, ‘talk’ is in my blood.”

Chiaro is just one of numerous veteran producers to leave the news business for daytime talk. Meghan Schaefer, an MSNBC staffer since it was called America’s Talking, joined Bethenny Frankel’s new fall show as co-EP. ABC’s Catherine McKenzie was named supervising producer of ‘The Queen Latifah Show,’ also set for fall.

Not to be forgotten, Jim Murphy, former boss of ABC’s “Good Morning America” and “CBS Evening News,” departed news to launch Anderson Cooper’s talk show in Fall 2011. He left four months later. A few weeks ago, he joined CNN as senior EP of its new morning block.

The transition from news to talk can be tough, says Chiaro, who came to NBC out of Cornell in 1996. The week following her departure from the network, Capt. ‘Sully’ Sullenberger heroically landed US Airways Flight 1459 on the Hudson River, known as ‘The Miracle on the Hudson.’

“I couldn’t get to a TV fast enough,” Chiaro acknowledges. “’I thought, ‘Oh my God, what am I doing?’ It was a difficult transition. Nothing gets the creative juices flowing like being in the control room when there’s breaking news. That doesn’t leave you.”

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Catherine McKenzie, “Good Morning America” weekend senior producer, is leaving the network and joining Queen Latifah’s upcoming talk show as supervising producer.

McKenzie, who oversees the weekend edition of “GMA” and produces for the weekday show, was also part of the team that produced “Good Afternoon America” during its summer 2012 run. The other senior producer on that show, Ethan Nelson, recently joined Katie Couric‘s syndicated show.

McKenzie has been with ABC for the last 18 years: 4 at ABC, and 14 years at WABC. Deadline has the other staff announcements on Queen Latifah. The show launches this Fall.

Mark Griffith, who worked at CBS News for much of the last 20 years, was found dead in his Brooklyn apartment yesterday. Co-workers grew suspicious after Griffith had missed a couple of shifts at his job at CBS. Police do not suspect foul play.

Griffith, 48, was a member of the National Association of Black Journalists and was VP of the New York chapter in the early 1990s.

In a statement from New York NABJ, chapter president Gary Anthony Ramsay and VP Catherine McKenzie write, “Our hearts go out to his younger brother Kevin, his aunt Joyce and her husband Herbert as well his co-workers and a myriad of loved ones around the country who mourn the passing a truly great guy and loyal friend.”

Griffith was most recently on the national assignment desk and had worked at both CBS News and CBS Sports