Tom Ciabrowski, who oversaw ABC’s “Good Morning America” during one of its most successful eras, is joining CBS News as president and executive editor.
The storied news division, which has been reeling over its legal battle involving President Trump, announced Thursday that Ciabrowski will oversee newsgathering and programming.
Ciabrowski will report to Wendy McMahon, president and chief executive of CBS News and Television Stations and CBS Media Ventures. He succeeds Adrian Roark, who briefly held the position before taking a leadership role at Tegna, a TV station group.
Ciabrowski is the fifth CBS News president since January 2019, when David Rhodes was replaced by Susan Zirinsky, who now heads a documentary unit at Paramount Global.
CBS News will be looking to Ciabrowski to provide stability as it navigates through a Trump lawsuit over its “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential election. Trump is suing the network for $20 billion, arguing that the Harris interview was deceptively edited and a form of election interference.
Settlement talks have taken place and CBS News parent Paramount Global is trying to close a merger deal with Skydance Media.
On the programming side, Ciabrowski will be charged with fixing the recently relaunched “CBS Evening News” that added an anchor team and a weather forecaster to its format, which has not been well-received by viewers.
Ciabrowski has deep experience in network news. He worked at CBS as a broadcast producer on its morning program “The Early Show” when it was co-anchored by Bryant Gumbel.
Ciabrowski moved to ABC where he traveled extensively while producing coverage of war zones in Kosovo and Iraq. Under his tenure as senior executive producer of “Good Morning America” in 2012, the program topped NBC’s “Today” in the ratings for the first time in 16 years.
Ciabrowski was promoted to senior vice president in charge of ABC News Programs, News Gathering and Special Events. He spent the last seven years as president and general manager of KGO-TV, the Disney-owned TV station in San Francisco.