ABC Hires Chung as Roving Reporter

Former “CBS Evening News” co-anchor Connie Chung was hired Monday to be a reporter for ABC News.

“Connie is one of a handful of distinguished network correspondents,” ABC News Chairman Roone Arledge said. “She’ll be a correspondent for all of our shows, and she’ll also be available to be a substitute anchor” on various programs, including “World News Tonight With Peter Jennings.”

Chung, 51, has been off the air since CBS management dropped her from the low-rated “Evening News” in May 1995 and left Dan Rather to anchor solo. A deal to host a syndicated news show with her husband, Maury Povich, fell apart last spring.

Diane Sawyer, co-anchor of ABC’s “PrimeTime Live,” recently negotiated for more time on the road to do investigative pieces, and network sources said that Chung might substitute occasionally for her on the show. Chung also might fill in as a substitute host on “20/20,” which is co-anchored by Barbara Walters and Hugh Downs and has added a new Thursday night edition along with its regular Friday night show.

But her primary duties will be as a reporter, mainly for the two newsmagazines, ABC said. Her contract was described only as multiyear and multimillion.

“I’m thrilled to be joining ABC News, which I believe is the best network news operation in the country,” said Chung, who was a correspondent at CBS News in the 1970s and an anchor at NBC News before rejoining CBS in 1989. Her pairing with Rather on the “CBS Evening News” lasted nearly two years.

Sawyer, Walters and Chung (who anchored her own newsmagazine, “Eye to Eye,” on CBS) all are known for going after big-name interviews. Asked whether there would be disagreements in competing with Sawyer and Walters, Chung joked that the question was sexist, saying, “I’m going to compete with Peter and Ted [Koppel], too.”

Chung said that she planned to work full time in her new job. She and Povich have a 2-year-old son they adopted soon after she lost her anchoring job at CBS.