Yes, Women Anchors Can Break the Glass TV Screen

by Karen Schulman, Senior Policy Analyst, 
National Women's Law Center 

In December, after George Stephanopoulos announced he was leaving "This Week," I asked whether women could take advantage of the opportunity to shatter a barrier and add some diversity to the anchor desk on the Sunday morning political shows. ABC still hasn’t made a decision, but in the meantime, CNN has leaped ahead and named Candy Crowley as the new anchor of its Sunday morning show, “State of the Union.” She will replace John King, who is taking over the 7pm slot on weekdays.

This move is long overdue and necessary for increasing women’s presence on the Sunday morning shows.  This past weekend, the six guests on NBC’s “Meet the Press” were all male, and “Fox News Sunday” had a panel discussion with four Congress members, all of them male.

Unfortunately, at the same time CNN is finally giving a woman the anchor job, it is scaling back the length of the show from four hours to one (the time will be filled be an updated edition at noon, and two other one-hour programs, both anchored by men). But with everything that women juggle in their lives, they are used to being super-efficient, so Candy should have no problem getting done in one hour what it took a guy four hours to do.