Anchors

CNN shuffles anchors Seeking to bolster its daytime lineup, CNN is making another anchor switch for the new year. The network is giving chief business correspondent Ali Velshi his own daily show from 10 a.m. to noon, a time slot currently anchored by Kyra Phillips, who will take over the 6 to 8 a.m. slot. Heidi Collins, who had been anchoring "CNN Newsroom" during that time, is leaving the network after nearly eight years. Velshi, a veteran financial reporter, already hosts "Your $$$$$," a weekend business round-table shown on the network, as well as "The Ali Velshi Show" on CNN Radio.

Gene Kelly on Film "An American in Paris" Kelly sings and dances to Gershwin tunes in this 1951 Oscar best picture winner "Anchors Aweigh" Kelly meets Tom and Jerry in this 1945 musical, for which he earned a lead actor Oscar nomination "Cover Girl" Kelly and Rita Hayworth dance up a storm in this 1944 musical-comedy

Veteran KNBC-TV Channel 4 newscaster Paul Moyer, one of the last of a breed of well-paid and highly promoted local news anchors, confirmed his retirement Wednesday from the station at which he's worked for nearly a quarter-century. "It's been a hell of a run," Moyer said in a brief phone interview. "I'm going to miss it, I'm going to miss it a lot. Any success I may have achieved I owe to the people of Southern California. I thank them for every one of those 37 years [in the L.A. market].

In the early stages of the last few games, the Clippers have gone inside to center DeAndre Jordan and let him operate, with some success. But one of the main reasons for going to Jordan early is that he has been the defensive anchor for the team, and Coach Vinny Del Negro thinks it is only right to keep his man happy. "If DJ is going to cover everybody's back all the time, he needs to touch the ball a little bit," said Del Negro, whose team had won six in a row before playing the Lakers on Wednesday.

Anchors back from Haiti All three network news anchors returned from Haiti over the weekend and anchored their evening newscasts from New York on Monday evening, a sign that the intense coverage of the earthquake's wreckage is abating. But even though NBC's Brian Williams, ABC's Diane Sawyer and CBS' Katie Couric have left Port-au-Prince, the broadcast and cable news networks still have large contingents in Haiti reporting on the aftermath. ABC, CBS, Fox News and NBC each have half a dozen correspondents and dozens of other producers in the field, a sizable commitment.

Capra states that the station has an "embarrassment of riches" in regards to their anchors. In truth what it has is Marlow and an embarrassment of pretty faces. I question the journalistic skills and the knowledge of Los Angeles possessed by any of those pretty faces. JANE WELLS Los Angeles

The Greek tanker Ethnic, which hit a mine in the Persian Gulf on Tuesday, has anchored off Dubai where divers are inspecting a hole in its starboard tanks, shipping sources said Saturday. They said the 274,629-ton tanker, carrying about 210,000 tons of Kuwaiti crude oil, arrived in Dubai on Saturday after anchoring off Ras Tanurah, Saudi Arabia, on Thursday. Divers will check the extent of damage and whether the ship must offload its cargo before sailing for Taiwan, the sources said.

USC's Antonio Manning won the 100 meters and anchored two Trojan relay teams to victory Saturday in the USC Collegiate Relays at Cromwell Field. Teams from USC, Washington State, Arizona, Iowa and Drake competed. In a dual meet held concurrently with the relays, Long Beach City College defeated Pasadena City College, 98-41. Manning won the 100 in 10.41 seconds after anchoring wins in the 400-meter relay and 800-meter relay. The times were 40.20 and 1:23.7.

Of course they'll title it the funeral of the century. Hillary Rodham Clinton mingled with Britain's stiffest upper lips. We sent our own royalty too, with Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw and other sovereigns of the airwaves pouring into London last week and bonging like Big Ben in advance of Saturday's memorably regal farewell to Princess Diana. It was quite a show. If your taste in funerals runs to "Masterpiece Theatre," this one was for you.

Owners of the 800-foot-long tanker American Trader, which has spewed hundreds of thousands of gallons of crude oil into the ocean off Huntington Beach, said Thursday that the ship's bottom probably was punctured by its own anchor as the ship maneuvered into an offshore mooring to unload its cargo. The same tanker has been involved in four other mishaps, two in the last year.

From the vintage globe projected behind the anchor desk to the Cronkite-era producers mixing it up at story meetings to the no-frills reports that fill 21 minutes and 16 seconds each weeknight, the "CBS Evening News" has made a determined effort to bring newsy back. A shift that began in the latter months of Katie Couric's five-year run has accelerated and taken on a new fervor in the last nine months since the ascension of Scott Pelley to the anchor's chair. When Pelley took the seat once occupied by Walter Cronkite last June, it represented a return to form at CBS News -- giving perhaps the network's most visible platform not to a celebrity host but to a longtime reporter best known for his work on "60 Minutes" and for dozens of forays to Iraq, Afghanistan and other world hot spots.

Kevin Graf has been a fixture at USC spring practice for 13 years. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the over-sized grade schooler roamed the sidelines and end zone while his brother Derek toiled as an offensive lineman for the Trojans. The sounds of gravel-voiced defensive line coach Ed Orgeron and former offensive line coach Tim Davis still reverberate a decade later. "My earliest memories of 'SC are being out at practice and hearing them yelling at each other across the field," Graf said.

  Flip through the radio dial any given afternoon and you might hear an angry-sounding white man railing against the government, Congress and dastardly politicians. No, not Rush Limbaugh. This one criticizes Congress for not giving more help to the poor, the government for cutting off unemployment benefits, and politicians for pledging to dissolve unions. Ed Schultz has, over the last two years, made a niche in radio and on TV by talking about the poor and middle class, solidly gaining in ratings while more and more Americans lost jobs, benefits and middle class status.

Richard Threlkeld, a former CBS and ABC correspondent who covered the fall of Saigon and helped establish the CBS "Sunday Morning" show with weekly stories that showcased his prodigious energy and incisive writing, died Friday in a car crash on Long Island, N.Y. He was 74. Threlkeld was driving his 2008 Mini Cooper in Amagansett when he collided with a propane tanker, according to the East Hampton Police Department. He was pronounced dead at Southampton Hospital, not far from his home in East Hampton.

You know who I blame for the terrible tone in American politics? Tom Brokaw. No, not the man himself, but what he represents. Since Dan Rather famously beclowned himself, Brokaw stands as the last of the respected "voice of God" news anchors (CBS News executive Don Hewitt's phrase). These were the oracles who simply declared what was news and what wasn't. Walter Cronkite, the prize of the breed, used to end his newscasts, "And that's the way it is" — as if he were speaking not just with journalistic but also epistemological and ontological authority.

NBC News has given a muscular-sounding name to its new prime-time newsmagazine: "Rock Center With Brian Williams. " Williams, anchor of "NBC Nightly News," will host the hour-long, as-yet-unscheduled program, with reports from Harry Smith, Kate Snow and other network correspondents. The name, though, may take some getting used to, which Williams wryly noted in the news release Monday: "Hopefully our journalism will speak louder than any name. If it doesn't, perhaps people will tune in to 'Rock Center' hoping to see Tina Fey. " —Scott Collins Bob Seger albums go digital Just put those old records back on the shelf: Bob Seger is headed to iTunes.

For nearly two years, construction crews have been drilling, pounding and hammering away at Buenaventura Mall, the 26-year-old regional shopping center in Ventura that is a landmark of western Ventura County. On the face of it, the crews have made progress, installing attractive glass ceilings and renovating the mall's center court and west wing. Next, they're going to refurbish the east wing.

The mothballed, mighty Iowa, one of the world's best-known and most powerful battleships, will be permanently berthed as a tourist attraction in Los Angeles on the San Pedro waterfront, Navy officials announced Tuesday. The World War II-vintage "Big Stick" could open to visitors as soon as next summer, according to supporters of the years-long effort to bring the ship to a berth at the Port of Los Angeles. "This is a huge win for Los Angeles and a huge boost for San Pedro," said Janice Hahn, the recently seated congressional Democrat whose district includes the port.

If quarterbacks, running backs and receivers who have been jolted by a tackle from Anaheim Servite middle linebacker Butch Pauu could see him in shorts holding a tennis racket, perhaps they'd feel a little better knowing their antagonist wasn't so tough after all. He's not so tough on a tennis court, but when the pads go on, Pauu becomes a 5-foot-11, 218-pound dynamo who always seems to be in the right spot at the right time. He has not missed a game the last two seasons, when, by no coincidence, Servite has won consecutive Pac-5 Division championships.