Diane Sawyer Decides to Stay With ABC, ‘PrimeTime Live’

Diane Sawyer, who had been pursued by CBS News, has decided not to exercise an option in her ABC contract that would have allowed her to leave the network, ABC News executives said Monday.

Sources said Sawyer’s pact with ABC extends for several more years, paying her an estimated $7 million annually.

She will continue to co-anchor ABC’s “PrimeTime Live” newsmagazine with Sam Donaldson and will contribute occasionally to ABC’s “Turning Point” documentary series.

In addition, ABC News Chairman Roone Arledge said in an interview, “I hope that Diane will do some appearances on specials and other programs.”

Arledge said that he expects “PrimeTime Live” to retain its 10 p.m. Wednesday slot on ABC’s prime-time schedule next season, despite periodic attempts by the entertainment division to take over that period. The newsmagazine ranks No. 9 among all prime-time series this season, with an average audience of 17.3 million people, and is ABC’s second highest rated series after “Home Improvement.”

There was some speculation that Sawyer’s decision to stay at ABC may have been influenced by CBS’ recent signing of Bryant Gumbel, the former anchor of NBC’s “Today” show, to host a prime-time newsmagazine. But her agent, Richard Leibner, said that was not the case.

“This was a decision about, ‘Do I want to stay at ABC News?’ ” Leibner said, “and the answer was yes.”

CBS officials said that the network had never entered formal negotiations with Sawyer.

Without specifying Sawyer, Arledge said that he hopes some of ABC’s newsmagazine stars will occasionally do stories for “World News Tonight With Peter Jennings,” which has fallen behind “NBC Nightly News With Tom Brokaw” in the ratings.

Meanwhile, executives at ABC and Discovery Networks said that ABC News will provide live coverage of events such as space launches, natural disasters and scientific discoveries for the Discovery cable channel, in addition to regular science-news specials. ABC is producing a new weekly science newscast, “Discovery News,” which premieres Friday on the Discovery channel.