The Biggest Female Names In TV Today

If you want to talk career longevity, take a look at Lesley Stahl, who has hosted CBS’s 60 Minutes for over 20 years, where she’s also a co-editor. Before taking over at 60 Minutes, she served as the network’s White House correspondent during the Carter, Reagan and first Bush administrations. Her broadcasts have seen the revealing of important political moves—like Reagan’s selection of George H.W. Bush as his VP, or Al Gore’s decision not to seek the presidency again in 2004.

No woman’s name is more synonymous with international journalism than Christiane Amanpour. Amanpour’s journalism career started as a desk assistant at CNN—but within a few years at the network, she was covering international events such as the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the Persian Gulf War, the later of which garnered her worldwide attention. Since then, she served for TK years as the network’s Chief International Correspondant, and had a stint as an anchor of ABC News’s The Week. Today, Amanpour is the host of a nightly interview show on CNN International, titled—you guessed it–Amanpour.

From morning shows to daytime to the nightly news, Katie Couric has done it all. It’s hard to argue what the television powerhouse is best known for: her 15-year run as a co-host of the Today show or her five years as anchor and managing editor of CBS Evening News, a role that earned her the title of best paid journalist in the entire world with a salary of a cool $15 million? But Couric’s accomplishments don’t stop there: she’s hosted her own daytime talk show, contributed to news shows such as 20/20 and Nightline, and most recently, was named Yahoo’s first global news anchor.

Co-host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe and author of memoir All Things At Once, Mika Brzezinski isn’t just a kick-ass anchor and a bestselling author but a defender of real journalism as well. When told report on Paris Hilton’s release from jail as Morning Joe’s lead story, she attempted to burn the story (but then settled for putting it through the paper shredder) on camera so they could focus on hard news. Defense of real journalism doesn’t get much more hard-core than that. Watch the video here.

Ann Curry’s name was in the news quite a bit in 2012 following her dramatic departure from her co-anchor role at the Today show. However, the Today show departure was just an incident in a long-lasting, successful broadcast career. Curry has worked with NBC since 1997 when she first started at the Today show. She also served as the host of Dateline for five years and has won two Emmy Awards for her reporting. Since she’s left Today, Curry was named a national and international correspondent for NBC News.

While she may be retired now, Meredith Vieira’s career has had many highlights, including taking over for Regis Philbin on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire to co-hosting morning show The View, but the real stand out line on her resume is her five year tenure as co-host of the Today show. Vieira left Today to retire in 2011, but was such a beloved part of the show that she continues to make guest appearances: one of the most notable was when she dressed up as Queen Elizabeth in honor of the Royal Wedding.

The CBS This Morning anchor and journalist Norah O'Donnell has gotten her feet wet in several different realms of television, from starting out as a staff writer for Roll Call covering Congress to contributing reports on progams such as the Today show, NBC Nightly News, and Dateline NBC. In addition to her morning gig, where she just celebrated her two year anniversary, you can regularly catch her filling in on CBS Evening News.