Good Morning America Girls

Good Morning America (GMA) is an American breakfast television show that is broadcast on the ABC television network; it debuted on November 3, 1975. The weekday program airs from 7:00-9:00am in all US time zones (live in the Eastern Time Zone and on tape delay in the remaining time zones); a third hour aired between 2007 and 2008 exclusively on ABC News Now. Its current one-hour weekend edition debuted in 2004.

The program features news, talk, weather and special-interest stories. The program is produced by the ABC News division for the network and broadcasts from the Times Square Studios in Times Square, New York City.

The program is hosted by Robin Roberts and George Stephanopoulos. Longtime co-anchor Charles Gibson left the program on June 28, 2006, to become the anchor of ABC World News, and Diane Sawyer left the program on December 11, 2009, to anchor the evening news program after Gibson retired.

GMA has traditionally run second in the ratings to NBC's Today since 1995, but overtook its rival for a period from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s under the anchor team of Gibson and Joan Lunden. GMA won the first three Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Morning Program, sharing the inaugural 2007 award with Today and winning the 2008 and 2009 awards outright.

On January 6, 1975, the ABC launched AM America in an attempt to compete with broadcaster NBC's Today. ABC's show was hosted by Bill Beutel and Stephanie Edwards, with Peter Jennings and Robert Kennedy reading the news. Because the show could not find an audience against Today (and its anchor team of Jim Hartz and Barbara Walters), the ABC sought a new approach. They found that one of their affiliates, WEWS in Cleveland, Ohio, was not broadcasting AM America but instead was airing a locally produced show The Morning Exchange.

Unlike AM America and Today, The Morning Exchange featured an easygoing and less-dramatic approach by offering news and weather updates only at the top and bottom of every hour and used the rest of the time to discuss general-interest/entertainment topics. The Morning Exchange also established a group of regular guests who were experts in certain fields such as health, entertainment, consumer affairs, travel, etc. Also unlike both the NBC and ABC shows, The Morning Exchange was not broadcast from a newsroom set but instead one that resembled a suburban living room.

ABC took an episode of The Morning Exchange and used it as a pilot episode. After rave reviews for the pilot, the format replaced AM America in November 1975 as Good Morning America. GMA's first host was David Hartman, featuring Nancy Dussault as his co-host. Dussault was replaced in 1977 by Sandy Hill. For the first seven years, the weather was presented by former WLS-TV Chicago chief meteorologist John Coleman, who would leave in 1982 to start The Weather Channel. Dave Murray, whose currently the chief meteorologist at KTVI in St. Louis, gave the forecasts for both GMA as well as ABC News This Morning from 1983 to 1985. In early 1986, he'd be replaced by Spencer Christian, who was fill-in meteorologist for both Coleman and Murray whenever they were away on vacation or assignment.