Ben Sherwood not only inherits from David Westin (right at ABC News HQ this morning) a smaller ABC News staff then the one he left four years ago, he’ll also be overseeing the network’s big money news shows which have all seen a transformation over the last year; and in most cases ratings declines.

Late last year, Charles Gibson‘s departure set the revolving door in motion: Diane Sawyer left “Good Morning America” for “World News”; George Stephanopoulos left “This Week” for “GMA” and Christiane Amanpour left CNN for “This Week.”

So how have those shows been doing?

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First on TVNewser: Ian Cameron, the executive producer of ABC’s “This Week with Christiane Amanpour,” is leaving the program at the end of the year, people familiar with the decision tell TVNewser.

Cameron was named executive producer of “This Week” in 2008, and before that served as senior Washington producer for “ABC World News with Charles Gibson.” He had been with ABC News since 1998.

“Nightline” executive producer James Goldston, who added oversight of “This Week” in August, will take over day-to-day operations when Cameron departs.

Based on a memo sent to employees by ABC News president David Westin, it appears that there may be some consolidation among the “Nightline” and “This Week” staff once the transition is complete:

James Goldston has been working with Ian and me for several months on This Week, and at the end of the year he will take over day-to-day responsibilities for producing the program, relying on the capable This Week staff in Washington as well as integrating operations where it makes sense with the Nightline team.

Update: It’s official, the letters from Westin and Cameron are after the jump.

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The senior executive producer of CNN’s “AC360,” David Doss, is leaving the program, TVNewser has learned.

He will remain with CNN, and will work in the network’s program development group under Sue Bunda. CNN/U.S. executive VP Ken Jautz made the announcement to staffers this morning.

“Ken wanted to tap into David’s talents on behalf of more shows,” a CNN insider says.

Doss is a veteran of ABC News and NBC News, where he served as executive producer of “NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw” and worked with Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson on “PrimeTime Thursday.”

He joined “AC360″ in 2005 as executive producer, but has since been joined by longtime Cooper producer Charlie Moore, who currently serves as EP. With Doss leaving, Moore will take over day-to-day oversight of “AC360.”

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The ratings are in the for just-completed 2009-2010 network evening news season. And when compared to 2008-2009 season, “NBC Nightly News” ABC’s “World News” and the “CBS Evening News” have lost a combined 739,000 Total Viewers and a combined 338,000 A25-54 viewers.

“Nightly News with Brian Williams,” which finishes at #1 for the 14th season in a row, lost the least: -138K Total Viewers (8.698M in 08-09 v. 8.560M in 09-10), while Katie Couric‘s CBS program, lost the most: -343K (6.053M in 08-09 v 5.710M in 09-10). “World News” which saw Charles Gibson anchor the first few months of the season, and Diane Sawyer picking up in December, lost the most younger viewers: -221K (2.351M in 08-09 v. 2.130 in 09-10).

The 2008-2009 season included coverage of the 2008 presidential election and inauguration.

Program	Total Viewers	A25-54 Viewers
	8.56M	2.56M
	7.56M	2.13M
	5.71M	1.74M

• Related: Broadcast Evening Newscasts Lose More than 1 Million Viewers in Past Year

A less than stellar summer week for the three network evening newscasts. As we mentioned, the “CBS Evening News with Katie Couric” tied an all-time low. The nation’s #1 newscast, “NBC Nightly News” also lost viewers during a week the show sent its star anchor Brian Williams to the Gulf Coast to anchor two days of broadcasts on the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. “World News with Diane Sawyer” was the only show of the three to increase viewers week-to-week — up 80,000.

And not a good sign from the younger viewer department — none of the shows broke the 2 million viewer average in the A25-54 demo. That’s the first time that’s ever happened. The last time “Nightly News” was under 2 million viewers in the demo was the week of July 2, 2007 when the show averaged 1.91M viewers. That same week “World News with Charles Gibson” drew 2.2 million A25-54 viewers.

The Writers Guild of America announced the winners of the 2010 WGA Awards for outstanding achievement in writing. “World News with Charles Gibson, written by Lee Kamlet, Julia Kathan and Joel Siegel took top honors in the news category. In the News analysis category, Thomas M. Jennings won
for “A Private War: Expose: America’s Investigative Reports” on PBS’ “Bill Moyers Journal”.

We continue providing the results from a round of polls we asked on Dec. 31, 2008. One of the questions we asked was, By This Time Next Year Which Network News Broadcast Will Be #1?

59% of you said NBC “Nightly News with Brian Williams” would remain in first place. It is. 34% of you thought “World News with Charles Gibson” would be in first place. What none of us saw coming was that Gibson would not be the anchor of “World News” at the close of 2009. Diane Sawyer took over the broadcast earlier this week.

• Tomorrow – The results of: The Today Show Will…

ABC News president David Westin sent a memo to the ABC News staff this morning about the first few days of the new GMA and the last few days of “World News with Charles Gibson.”

You will have noticed that, for both GMA and World News, our transitions by design have been low key. As we showed with the launch of Nightline, it is better to build steadily and perform over time than to launch a major campaign targeting the first day; in the end, this is not about the first day, and it is not about us.

Full memo after the jump…

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At the end of last night’s “World News with Charles Gibson“, the first “World News with Diane Sawyer” promo went to air. Here it is:

In Charles Gibson‘s second-to-last week as anchor of “World News,” he drew 8.8M Total Viewers, up 500,000 from the week prior, but still more than a million behind NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.

All three broadcasts were up week to week in both Total Viewers and A25-54 demo viewers. The network evening newscasts are putting up some of their best numbers since January, which tends to happen during the winter months.

• Total Viewers: NBC: 9,890,000 / ABC: 8,800,000 / CBS: 6,760,000

• A25-54: NBC: 2,960,000 / ABC: 2,520,000 / CBS: 2,040,000