Amanpour's New, This Week's the Same

Christiane Amanpour made her much-debated move into the host's chair at ABC's This Week today, replacing George Stephanopoulos and a parade of interim fill-ins, and critics agree: The show feels essentially the same.

• Besides some cosmetic tweaking, the highest-profile change was "a new face who fit with Amanpour's goal of giving the show a more outside-the-beltway feel: from Madrid, Amanpour welcomed Ahmed Rashid, who was billed as 'the world authority on the Taliban,'" Chris Ariens blogs for TVNewser.

• "When ABC hired Amanpour they made quite a lot of noise about the different perspective she would bring to the show," Glynnis MacNicol writes for Mediaite, but "what was most striking about the show this morning was how little had changed."
• "Amanpour appeared comfortable and aggressively inquisitive in her new position," writes Frazier Moore of the AP. But with the exception of two taped interviews on a show that's usually live, "mostly the hour format stuck closely to the past."

For another take on Amampour's hiring, which got some pundits sniping, click here.
(More Christiane Amanpour stories.)