The conclave to elect the next Pope will begin Tuesday after morning mass. Here’s what the broadcast and cable networks have planned for coverage.

ABC’s Diane Sawyer will broadcast “World News” from the Vatican beginning this evening. Sawyer is joined in Rome by Terry Moran, Josh Elliott, David Wright, Cokie Roberts, Rob Claiborne and Cecilia Vega. The network plans to broadcast special reports for the cardinals’ twice-daily votes.

CBS’ Scott Pelley will also be live from Vatican City starting today. Norah O’Donnell and Charlie Rose will host “CBS This Morning” live from Vatican City, with CBS News correspondents Allen Pizzey and Mark Phillips contributing to coverage.

Chris Jansing and Lester Holt will lead coverage for NBC News and MSNBC from Rome.  Anne Thompson, Keir Simmons, Claudio Lavangna and George Weigel will also contribute to NBC-MSNBC coverage. Both networks will provide special reports for the cardinals votes. Jansing and Holt also led coverage of the last papal conclave in 2005, which Jansing talks about in a lengthy Q&A with Inside Cable News.

On Fox News, Shepard Smith will anchor from Rome. He will be joined by correspondents Amy Kellogg and Lauren Green to cover the conclave. Bryan Llenas will be reporting for Fox News Latino.

Chris Cuomo and Anderson Cooper will lead CNN’s coverage from Rome. Ben Wedeman, Miguel Marquez, Dan Rivers and Becky Anderson will report, along with CNN en Español’s Adriana Hauser and Jose Levy. CNN Vatican analyst John Allen will also contribute to coverage.

With Pope Benedict XVI set to resign on Thursday, U.S. networks are beginning to plan for coverage of the unprecedented (at least in modern times) event.

George Stephanopoulos and Terry Moran will lead the network’s coverage of the Pope’s departure, anchoring “Good Morning America” from the Vatican on Wednesday and Thursday, as well as two special reports Thursday morning. Moran will anchor “Nightline” from Rome on Wednesday and Thursday, as well as contribute to the network’s coverage. David Wright, Ron Claiborne, Cokie Roberts and Christiane Amanpour will also report from the Vatican.

Wright covered the death of Pope John Paul II and the election of Benedict, while Roberts’ mother, Lindy Boggs, was the Ambassador to the Holy See from 1997-2001.

Diane Sawyer will lead the network’s coverage of the Conclave in March.
Read more

Fox News’s Shepard Smith will soon be on his way to Rome, reporting from the Vatican on the resignation of Benedict XVI and upcoming Conclave and election. Senior Foreign Affairs Correspondent Greg Palkot will be there tomorrow while Amy Kellogg should be on the ground by this afternoon. Smith, Palkot and Kellogg all covered the death of Pope John Paul II and election of Benedict in 2005.

NBC News correspondent/MSNBC anchor Chris Jansing, who also covered the last Papal transition will be leaving this afternoon for several days of reporting/anchoring and will also cover the election of the next pope. In a Media Beat interview, Jansing told us covering the death of John Paul II and election of Benedict was the most fulfilling assignment of her career: “It was just an extraordinary global event and also had some personal meaning to me.” Jansing will join NBC Rome correspondent Claudio Lavagna already on scene. Richard Engel will also report.

CBS has Allen Pizzey in Rome and London correspondent Mark Phillips will be joining him.

“GMA” Weekend Anchor Dan Harris, along with David Wright, Jeffrey Kofman, and Nick Schifrin will be reporting from the Vatican. Wright covered the 2005 transition. ABC’s Cokie Roberts, whose mother served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican, will provide a historical perspective.

CNN’s Rome-based correspondent Ben Wedeman will cover and will be joined by Jim Bitterman, Max Foster and Jose Levy for CNN en Español are all en route.

Former ABC News anchor Sam Donaldson was arrested for driving under the influence earlier this month. TMZ first reported the news this afternoon.

Donaldson was pulled over December 1st in Delaware and failed a field sobriety test. He was subsequently taken to a nearby police station, was booked, and released.

“Law enforcement notes that Donaldson was very cooperative.” TMZ notes.

Donaldson was twice ABC’s White House correspondent, and also served as co-anchor of “PrimeTime Live” with Diane Sawyer and “This Week” with Cokie Roberts. He is retired from ABC, though he still serves as a contributor to ABC News programming.

,TVNewser was in Boston this weekend as several TV news anchors and contributors took a trip down memory lane.

They gathered at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library for a panel discussion on the life of Tip O’Neill, the legendary former Speaker of the House who passed away in 1994. Sunday marked 100 years since O’Neill’s birth.

Charlie Gibson – who covered O’Neill in the eighties for ABC News – moderated the forum, which featured reminiscing and story-telling among those who also shared the Tip beat back in the day: Bloomberg’s Al Hunt, ABC’s Cokie Roberts and her husband, writer-broadcaster Steve Roberts, and columnist turned “Morning Joe” contributor Mike Barnicle.

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, once a top aide to O’Neill, told the audience he was “overwhelmed to have the chance” to be on the Speaker’s staff.

Gibson called O’Neill “an American original” and the “most fascinating” person he ever covered.

The panel discussion was recorded for broadcast January 1 on C-SPAN3.

Not sure who had the remote control for those huge monitors at the Romney campaign site in Boston — the ones that kept changing all night. But it made for fun viewing for us.

During an ABC liveshot with David Muir, Fox News was on the monitors. Later, during a liveshot with NBC’s Peter Alexander, ABC was on. At the end of the report, Brian Williams said, “Peter Alexander, and for a time, Barbara Walters and Cokie Roberts. Thank you all.”

NBC gets the bragging rights for being the first to call the election for Obama at 11:12pmET. An Ohio victory put the president over the top. CBS followed at 11:15, then Fox News, CNN and at 11:25pm ABC News.

‘Tis commencement season, and so without further ado, we present TVNewser’s fifth annual list of who’s-speaking-where-and-when at America’s colleges and universities (in alphabetical order):

ABC/CNN’s Christiane Amanpour: University of Southern California - Annenberg School of Journalism,  May 11

NBC’s Tom Brokaw: Arizona State University , May 3…Vanderbilt University (TN) – Senior Class Day, May 10

FNC’s SVP of News Editorial Michael Clemente: Warren County Community College (NJ), May 19

ABC’s Katie Couric:  University of Virginia, May 20

NBC’s Tom Costello: University of Colorado, Journalism & Mass Communication, May 10.

NBC’s David Gregory: Emerson College (MA), May 14

CNN/CBS’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta: University of Michigan, previously on April 28

NBC’s Savannah Guthrie: Hobart and William Smith Colleges (NY), May 13

MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry: Wellesley College (MA), May 25

PBS’s Maria Hinojosa: Simmons College (MA) – Morning Commencement, May 18

NBC’s Lester Holt: Pepperdine University (CA), previously on April 28

PBS’s Gwen Ifill: Holy Names University (CA), May 12… Bates College (ME), May 26

More after the jump, including Koppel, Lehrer, Sawyer, Schieffer, and three Williamses (Brian, Juan, and Pete)

Read more

If founder Brian Lamb had to do it over again, C-SPAN wouldn’t be called C-SPAN.

“It’s not the greatest name around,” says Lamb, 70, who steps down Sunday as CEO. “Three people know what it stands for. I don’t even know what it stands for. One of our board members asked me. We rarely ever spell it out.”

Drum roll, please.

Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network launched on March 19, 1979, with four employees (including Lamb) and a reach of 3.5 million homes. It now includes three networks, a staff of 280 and a universe of 100 million homes.

Most Americans assume the ‘C’ in C-SPAN stands for Congress, since covering Congress’ proceedings – live, unfiltered, gavel-to-gavel – is its raison d’etre. But in 1979, with cable in its infancy, Lamb felt it more important to brand C-SPAN as a non-broadcast enterprise.

“Otherwise, people wouldn’t have known what it was,” says Lamb, newly-named executive chairman. “At that point, we were only the sixth cable network.”

These days, C-SPAN suffers no such identity crisis, though Lamb does, often being mistaken for Sen. John McCain, Ed Harris or John Glenn. According to C-SPAN’s most recent survey, 75 percent of respondents recognize the non-profit network’s name, Lamb says. Since C-SPAN does not have ratings, however, he has no hard numbers on viewership.

ABC’s Cokie Roberts, who was, in her own words, “very involved in the birth” of C-SPAN, sees the network’s identity issue differently.

“I don’t think people are aware of the brand, but they’re very aware of the product,” Roberts, 68, says. As an NPR reporter in the late ‘70s, she and her colleagues in Congress’ Radio-TV gallery joined Lamb in lobbying the House of Representatives to allow TV cameras on the floor.

Despite C-SPAN’s noble mission, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and ‘Saturday Night Live,’ among others, parody the network’s frequently-static content as a perfect sleep aid.

In real life, C-SPAN fan Ed Rendell, former Democratic National Committee Chairman, swears by the network for his nightly zzzz’s.

“I have a hyperactive mind, so I watch TV in my living room and fall asleep for about 90

Read more

• Former ABC Newser Bob Wheelock has joined Al Jazeera English as executive producer for the Americas. Wheelock, who was senior producer of ABC’s special events unit, has also been a senior producer, broadcast producer and London bureau chief for NBC News.
• Candy Crowley, CNN’s chief political correspondent, received the University of Kansas’ William Allen White journalism citation Friday. Previous recipients include Walter Cronkite, Bernie Shaw, Bob Woodward and Cokie Roberts.
• WNET has hired Julie Anderson as executive producer of documentaries and development. Anderson, who is up for an Academy Award in the short documentary film category this year, starts tomorrow.

ABC’s Christiane Amanpour was presented with Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism this afternoon.

In her acceptance speech, Amanpour, the host of ABC’s “This Week,” called journalism “a great endeavor; it is a sacred endeavor. It is a public service.”

“It’s hard work,” she told journalism students during a question and answer session before the awards ceremony. “Stand up, grab the microphone and don’t be afraid to ask the questions.”

Amanpour is the 28th recipient of the ASU award, which has previously been given to fellow ABCers Diane Sawyer and Cokie Roberts, as well as Brian Williams, Jane Pauley and Tom Brokaw.