Ross says she knew when she took the GMA job that “the show was treated like the illegitimate stepchild of the News division.” ABC’s correspondents were merely taping new leads after the evening-news show aired for warmed-over segments to be used on the morning show; there wasn’t even a system for ABC’s affiliates to alert the program to great local stories. Legendary for putting in 100-hour weeks, Ross became a one-woman force for change, pushing the staff hard—ultimately too hard—to book the most desirable guests and come up with compelling TV. Rather than just have the anchors interview prolific author Stephen King, for example, she brought in actors to read from his books and try to stump him in remembering which passage came from what text. That’s a gimmick, for sure, but it’s the kind of gimmick that works on morning TV. After that first week when ratings soared, the progress was slow but steady, and Ross won a reputation among her peers for turning Good Morning America into a worthy adversary. “She came into a moribund show,” says Steve Friedman, a former producer of Today and CBS’s morning show, “and gave it a shot of adrenaline. She woke up the patient.”

Innovation in morning TV often consists of copying what another show does successfully, if in a slightly different form, and ABC did that, too. Mimicking Today’s street-level, windowed studio, Good Morning America relocated at the end of 1999 from a windowless studio on the Upper West Side to its new home at 44th and Broadway. “The minute we arrived, it was like someone put extra caffeine in our coffee,” says Sawyer. “You get to go out live with our cameras, meet the doorman who sings at the Millennium Hotel, go see the guys at the recruiting station.” GMA also copied Today’s use of Rockefeller Center as a stage for its concerts and other popular special events, and began booking bands for its own Times Square gigs.

Although it’s true that morning-TV viewers typically reject hard news with their Cheerios, certain events—war, natural disasters—are exceptions, making viewers hungry for breaking developments from the moment they wake up. On 9/11 and in the following weeks, Sawyer and Gibson, experienced at handling breaking news, won a substantial following for their solid and sensitive coverage, and after the crisis ebbed, newly loyal audience members continued to tune in. Since then, GMA has frequently won its time slot when news breaks—recently, for example, when John Paul II died.

GMA has also tinkered with its cast. Robin Roberts, a former ESPN sportscaster who started doing pieces for the show in 1995, was promoted to the more visible job of newsreader three years ago. Like a long-married couple who need something to spice up the relationship, Sawyer and Gibson were happy to have a new playmate. “I get on Diane’s nerves, and she’ll tell you that she gets on mine,” says Gibson. “Robin changed the dynamics. She’s an energizer.” Roberts gives this assessment of the ensemble: “Diane is sexy, she’s the “It” girl; you want to hang out with her and be her friend. Charlie’s like the lovable uncle at the picnic, and I’m the sidekick.”

By last spring, Good Morning America had closed the ratings gap to the 1.3 million figure, but the staff had grown restive with the tough-love leadership style of Ross. With her my-way-or-the-highway attitude, she had alienated the cast and crew. “It was not a democracy, it was a dictatorship,” says Roberts. She credits Ross with reinventing the show, but adds, “It got to the point where we needed to be hugged.” Perkins echoes the sentiment: “We didn’t always see eye-to-eye.” Sawyer, ever deft at avoiding controversy, declined to discuss Ross. Gibson, who has been publicly portrayed as the villain in this drama, denies he was responsible for her departure. But he acknowledges that he and Ross often clashed over the content of the show—“Shelley and I had real disagreements,” he says. He was particularly upset in early 2004 when Ross insisted on leading the show with video of the police raid on Michael Jackson’s Neverland, rather than a story he believed was far more important, the decision of Massachusetts’ highest court to allow gay marriage, a ruling that would turn out to have a major impact on the presidential election.

A few weeks later, Ross was gone, transferred to run Primetime (she has since moved from that slot to a job developing new content). Westin insists that there was never a GMA staff rebellion, and that he “needed” Ross elsewhere, but admits that “she did not want to move” from GMA. Ross says she takes comfort from several recent stories giving her credit for setting the show on course, but it has to be painful for her to be watching from the sidelines as GMA closes the gap on Today.