Following their respective morning newscasts, local stations in Washington, DC have traded local coverage for national coverage of President Obama’s ceremonial swearing-in ceremony.

Around 11amET Monday, all four DC stations — NBC O&O WRC, ABC affiliate WJLA, Fox O&O WTTG and CBS affiliate WUSA — began airing coverage provided by their respective affiliated networks. Brian Williams is anchoring on NBC, Scott Pelley on CBS, Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos on ABC, and Shepard Smith on Fox Broadcast Network. President Obama is expected to deliver his inaugural address at 12pmET.

• Related, TVNewser: Network TV Coverage of 2013 Inauguration

At least one station, WTTG, will go back to local coverage for the parade. Maureen Umeh will anchor, with Brian Bolter, Shawn Yancy and Sue Palka at the Canadian Embassy, Matt Ackland on the Freedom Plaza and Bob Barnard along the parade route.

>Update: WUSA also returned briefly to local programming at 1pmET, turning it back over to CBS at 1:30pm. The station will have expanded newscasts this afternoon and evening.

Sinclair Broadcast Group is under fire for an election special that aired on stations in battleground states Monday night. The half-hour special — broadcast on the eve of the election in Columbus, Dayton and West Palm Beach — is being criticized as a partisan attack on President Barack Obama. Talking Points Memo, which first reported on the special, writes it “sounded more like Fox News than local news”:

ABC affiliate WSYX in Columbus aired a half-hour “election special” twice on Monday night — first at 6:30 p.m. instead of World News with Diane Sawyer, and later at 11:30 p.m., during the slot normally held by Nightline. Rather than a side by side comparison of the two major party candidates, however, the special featured some of the most partisan criticisms of President Barack Obama, and spent relatively little time examining Republican nominee Mitt Romney.

“Much of the first two years of President Obama’s term in office was spent developing and defending Obamacare — that’s the Affordable Care Act, signed into law in March of 2010,” anchor Bob Kendrick said, near the program’s halfway point. “It supposedly guarantees health care for any U.S. resident who could not obtain good health care otherwise. The biggest parts of the law go into effect in 2014, with other pieces of it rolling out over the next decade. The cost of Obamacare is making many Americans sick to their stomach, though.” Read more

ABC’s Diane Sawyer is a busy woman, but she made time today to stop WSOC‘s broadcast location at the Democratic National Convention. She visited with Erica Bryant and Blair Miller, the evening co-anchors at the Charlotte ABC-affiliate.

“Talk about nerves…” Miller tweeted. “It’s not every day Diane Sawyer stops by to watch you anchor a newscast and then sits down to talk with you on-air.”

Seattle ABC-affiliate KOMO is remembering Kathi Goertzen, a longtime anchor who died yesterday after a long fight with brain tumors. Goertzen’s longtime co-anchor, Dan Lewis, looked back at more than 25 years with the veteran anchor, calling her “the heart and soul of our news team” (video above).

KOMO presented an hourlong special, hosted by Lewis and sports director Eric Johnson, on Goertzen’s life and career last night. The pair were joined by meteorologist Steve Pool and anchor Mary Nam, who shared candid and emotional memories of Goertzen. Read more

Monica Pearson anchored her final newscast on WSB last night after 37 years at the Atlanta ABC-affiliate.

The station’s salute to Pearson during the evening newscasts included a surprise visit from John Pruitt, Pearson’s longtime partner at the anchor desk, and well-wishes from “ABC World News” anchor Diane Sawyer (video above).

Here’s an inside look at ABC News. In this episode of mediabistroTV’s “Cubes,” David Muir, weekend anchor of “World News,” gives us a behind-the-scenes tour of the ABC News headquarters.

The ABC complex on Manhattan’s upper west side is home to ABC News, “Live! with Kelly,” and local New York station WABC. Diane Sawyer also makes a cameo in the video (as do her dozens of Emmys).

For more mediabistroTV videos, check out our YouTube channel, and be sure to follow us on Twitter: @mediabistroTV

ABC’s Diane Sawyer took some time during the “World News” tease on WJLA last night to recognize the one-year anniversary of Alison Starling and Leon Harris anchoring the 5 p.m. newscast (video above).

“I just think sometimes you have to pay attention to an anniversary,” Sawyer said, as boxes of cupcakes appeared on the anchor desk. “Eat and be merry, and we celebrate you.”

An investigative report from WFTV, the ABC-affiliate in Orlando, was featured on “World News with Diane Sawyer” yesterday (watch above).

WFTV reporter Jeff Deal got a tip that the owner of a local parking lot was taking cars out for a spin while their owners were out. To investigate, Deal equipped a rented red Corvette with a tracking device and left the convertible at the parking lot. Read more

Viewers in South Bend got a glimpse behind the scenes at WBND on Friday, as the ABC-affiliate accidentally cut from “World News” to a shot of anchor Krista Fogelsong doing her hair.

Looking into a hand mirror, Fogelsong said something about “humid hair” before the station switched back to Diane Sawyer.

“Yep.. I got caught on camera,” Fogelsong wrote on Facebook, following the incident.  “Of course I was looking in the mirror. UGH.” Read more

After publicly criticizing Diane Sawyer and ABC News for inaccurate reporting on the Monday edition of “World News,” WBMA chief meteorologist James Spann was featured on the program last night in a segment about the tornado warning system.

The segment included reporting on how residents were able to get to safety before the tornadoes — with Sawyer noting “it could have been far worse” — but did not include acknowledgement or clarification of the previous night’s report, which stated that residents had “no warning” of the tornado threat.

ABC reporter Steve Osunsami said Alabama residents knew what to do “because the warnings came early” (watch above). Read more