DaytonDailyNews.com

Dayton is scheduled to be the first stop on the ABC television network's "The Great American Battleground Bus Tour," starring Charlie Gibson.

Why Dayton?

"Why not Dayton?" replied Gibson, who will tape interviews in Dayton during the day on Monday, Oct. 6, and anchor that evening's "World News with Charles Gibson" from an outdoor location along the Great Miami River.

"We consciously didn't want to do major urban centers," he said. "We wanted to do middle-sized town America, places with populations of 100,000 or 200,000. Places that were relatively balanced in terms of previous elections. And I don't think it was just happenstance that John McCain picked Dayton to introduce his running mate. If McCain loses Ohio, he ain't gonna' win this thing."

The bus tour is part of a combined "50 States in 50 Days" campaign by ABC and USA Today. Other scheduled stops on this segment of the tour include Bowling Green, Ohio; Kalamazoo, Mich.; Racine, Wisc.; and Davenport, Iowa. The tour originally had been set to start earlier this week in Orlando, Fla., and continue to Valdosta, Ga., before reaching Dayton on Sunday evening, but the schedule was changed to adjust for coverage of the breaking financial news in Washington and on Wall Street.

In Dayton, Gibson plans to conduct interviews with former and current workers from General Motors' Moraine assembly plant, "because jobs are such a major part of this campaign. And it's a story people can relate to on a national level." But, he added, some of the interviews "will be spontaneous. I may just stop at a diner and we'll take the cameras in and talk with people there."

For the evening news, which begins at 6:30, "We'll be anchoring from atop a levy along the Great Miami River, on Edwin C. Moses Blvd., just north of Stewart St. and directly across from the Job Center," an ABC public relations woman said. "There won't be much room on top, but there's plenty of grassy space between the levee and river that would allow people to watch the broadcast."

"If people want to talk after the broadcast, I'll be happy to stick around," Gibson volunteered.

Contact this writer at 225-2439 or at dlstewart@DaytonDailyNews.com.