Roberts puts away his bridesmaid dress

John Roberts will wait no more, the perennial favourite to have succeeded Dan Rather at CBS News seems to have realized that he wasn't going to move up the ladder at CBS, so today he announced that he was moving on.

Roberts will be moving over to CNN on February 20th, where he will become a national affairs reporter providing updates through the day for the Cable News Network. It brings to an end a long association for Roberts with CBS, a network he joined in 1992 after spending time at CTV's Canada AM and of course before that as a VJ on the then fledgling MuchMusic cable network. Prior to that Roberts worked for City TV in Toronto, among his projects there was a music journalism show called the New Music.

Perhaps it was those early roots that caused second thoughts in the hallowed halls of the place they called Black Rock. That despite earning his spurs as a field reporter and White House correspondent for CBS. Roberts had a taste of the anchor position as the weekend anchor at CBS news, but was passed over when Rather retired last year as Bob Schieffer was handed the microphone and tele prompter and told to get to work.

Schieffer is considered to be a temporary host until CBS decides on a permanent host, a melodrama that seems to go on and on and on. The most recent name of a replacement is that of NBC's Katie Couric who continues to surface over and over again as a potential anchor for the networ. With each mention of Couric's name, Roberts seemed to drop further and further off the list.

For CNN it certainly is a reversal of fortunes of late, having just dismissed Aaron Brown replacing him with Anderson Cooper, the long time innovator of the Cable News genre has seen much of its talent and a lot of its ratings migrate over to the testosterone infused ranks of Fox News Channel. Bringing in a name such as Roberts may be a bid to stem the flow of talent and viewers heading towards the likes of Bill O'Reilly, Brit Hume and Chris Wallace to name a few.

It may finally be the first salvo in a renewed war for viewers of the two competing news channels, a war that has gone a fair amount towards Fox over the last couple of years. General Blitzer is no doubt anxiously awaiting Commander Roberts arrival in the Situation Room.