Menounos Joins Access Hollywood

Entertainment reporter Maria Menounos is joining NBC Universal's Access Hollywood and NBC News' Today show this fall from Entertainment Tonight, where she has been a correspondent.

She will serve as a special correspondent for Access Hollywood, which returns for a 10th season  Sept. 5, and will be a West Coast contributor to Today.

Menounos has served as a correspondent for Paramount's ET since fall 2001, reporting on film, TV, music and fashion, and also hosted ET on co-owned MTV and VH1.

Among her TV and film acting credits was a recurring role on the WB's One Tree Hill. She began as an international correspondent for the teen-oriented Channel One News.

The move represents a new genre of high-profile entertainment newsmagazine correspondent, now dubbed "special correspondent."

ET recently announced that Kathie Lee Gifford would return as a special correspondent five years after leaving her daytime talk partner Regis Philbin.