Why Charlie Gibson And Joan Lunden Were Replaced On Good Morning America

Joan Lunden was 46 years old when she announced her exit from "Good Morning America" in 1997. In her farewell message, she revealed that she planned to take some time off to focus on her family, according to The Los Angeles Times. But years later, Lunden came clean on what really happened and revealed that

Joan Lunden was 46 years old when she announced her exit from "Good Morning America" in 1997. In her farewell message, she revealed that she planned to take some time off to focus on her family, according to The Los Angeles Times. But years later, Lunden came clean on what really happened and revealed that she was actually asked to leave the show. Lunden told Oprah's "Where Are They Now?" that ABC executives never mentioned her age as a factor in their decision to let her go. Instead they told her, "We've decided to make a change on the show." 

"And so they found a 30-year-old version of me," she added. Lunden noted that they did the same thing to Gibson. "By the way, it was not just me. It was Charlie and me," she told Oprah. "They replaced both of us with kind of, you know, a 30-year-old version of each of us, and it didn't work."

Lunden made similar comments to Parade in 2013. "The executives made a decision that younger was better; they replaced me and Charlie Gibson with 30-something versions of ourselves," she said. "I agreed to say I was going on to do other things, and then I did them. I think they lost about 4 million viewers in a week. It was a calculated risk and it didn't work."

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