Jane Pauley

A poised anchor with a polished yet warm delivery, Jane Pauley was a mere 25 years old when she was chosen to replace Barbara Walters as the female host on NBC's "Today," and she has since gone on to become a primetime news anchor as well as a respected telejournalist.

In 1980, she added reporting on the "NBC Nightly News" to her duties and, for two years, Pauley rolled up her sleeves with other news gatherers. Besides covering the royal wedding of Prince Charles and Diana and the funeral of Grace of Monaco, Pauley had begun anchoring and reporting the network's occasional, yet prestigious, primetime documentaries, "NBC White Paper," including "Women, Work, and Babies: Can America Cope?" (1985) and "Divorce is Changing America" (1986).

She was also part of the NBC team at political conventions and interviewed world leaders when "Today" went overseas. Pauley anchored the network's 1988 Olympics coverage. In 1989, NBC's News executive Dick Ebersol, sensing a need for a change, replaced Pauley with Deborah Norville. Pauley continued to work for NBC News, and the network immediately gave her a special "Changes: Conversations with Jane Pauley" (1990), in which she interviewed celebrities.

Later that year, she did five "Real Life With Jane Pauley" programs as a prototype for primetime newsmagazine. Pauley was then teamed with Stone Phillips on the revamped "Dateline: NBC" (1992- ). This garnered excellent ratings, and early in 1996, the network scheduled yet another "Dateline" night--Sundays--against CBS' formidable "60 Minutes."

Pauley has also served as a substitute anchor for Tom Brokaw on the "NBC Nightly News." With the launch of a new cable news channel, MSNBC, in 1996, Pauley was also tapped to host "Time and Again," a nightly look at history as viewed by NBC News.