BLAIR LEAVES THE AIR
KITMAN, MARVIN
On Television BLAIR LEAVES THE AIR BY MARVIN KITMAN NBC News' Today devoted its entire two hours the morning of March 14 to retiring newscaster Frank Blair. It was the first time the nation's...
...Featured in this retrospective of Blair's cinematic work were At Home With My Family, starring Mr...
...Ever since August 3, 1953, Blair had been delivering the traditional five or six minute national newscast every half-hour from 7-9 a.m...
...Yet this quality of semistupor often seemed to be the secret of his wide popularity with average American early morning TV viewers...
...Blair was as much a part of the American scene as the stoplight, and his absence confused and irritated everybody...
...America team of Beutel, Stephanie Edwards and Peter Jennings...
...He was probably the most powerful communicator in the nation, in that he was the major news source for the millions of TV viewers either too busy running the country or too lazy to read a paper...
...You would probably be right in speculating that Van Doren wasn't invited to say goodbye to Frank," a usually reliably informed network source speculated...
...Alot of people undoubtedly liked Blair...
...Frank Blair and their eight children, who appeared live, too...
...in my mind's eye I can see the World-Telegram headline containing that charge, which means Agnew was still eking out a living in his Baltimore law office.' Compared to his colleagues at NBC, everybody agrees, Blair was the one man who seemed to have paralysis of the face...
...That might even put some life into the competition...
...The fact that Blair was a home movie freak was news to me, but I am told that one of the more interesting off-camera sights at the Today studios the previous few months was Frank arriving each morning lugging a shopping bag filled with hundreds of feet of home movies...
...Another technique he frequently employed was getting the ballscores mixed up...
...J. Fred Muggs, the chimpanzee, had a prior engagement that morning-being interviewed by Bill Beutel on A.M...
...The Weather in the United States and Vicinity," as the concept has been called, was so broad as to be almost useless to all except Russian U-2 pilots...
...He didn't have to read books or attend movies and plays to keep up with the arts, the way Gene Shalit must, nor did he have to prepare for interviews with luminaries like Henry Kissinger, the way Barbara Walters must...
...Still, it was always more interesting than other aspects of the monument's work...
...The obscure college professor, it may be recalled, won $129,000 on Twenty One before being defeated in 1957 by Vivienne Nearing in the quiz show upset of the week, and was then awarded a Today seat alongside original host Dave Garroway as a sort of consolation prize...
...And Muggs was very impressive in his interview with Bill Beutel on Frank Blair Day...
...Devoting a minute-and-a-half of a six-minute report, or roughly 27 percent of the time, to this kind of soft information reveals a questionable hard news judgment...
...Knowing the way the great minds of broadcasting work, I expect Frank Blair to be invited to join the revolutionary A.M...
...Also actress Estelle Parsons, who in 1952 was the first regular female cast member, and thus paved the way for the invention of Barbara Walters as the nation's electronic Torquemada...
...I wouldn't be surprised if after a decent period of time in the bosom of his family, Frank Blair gets the urge to return to broadcasting...
...Over the years he has become closely identified with the notion of the national weather picture...
...It is even rumored that after Jim Hartz replaced Frank McGee as host, consideration was given to writing the word "Jim" into Blair's script, lest he say one morning, "Now back to you, Frank (or Hugh or Dave...
...He had no opinion whatsoever on any of the great events which have occurred since 1953," explained a source close to the legend...
...I didn't quite understand the announcement, since his job was the least demanding on the Today show...
...and A Mad Montage, a 90-second family history...
...Maybe it is too soon to make a judgment, but it would seem that one of the secrets of Blair's success was his approach to the news...
...That truly may be Frank Blair's lasting contribution to American TV journalism...
...Some believed it was easy for Blair to refrain from the natural desire to editorialize, to scream out in some subtle visual way about all the absurdities in the news he was reading...
...Weather Service...
...In all of his 22 years on the air, nobody can remember hearing him express a single viewpoint, clearly a big advantage to a network newscaster...
...Joe Garagiola has returned to us as a car salesman, following in the hallowed footsteps of Hugh Downs...
...Perhaps his family suffered only seeing him 22 hours a day...
...Sayonnara, You All, a two-minute film made in the basement on a rainy day starring the Blair Family, which the producer described as "a love story of Southern Japan...
...Also Jack Lescoulie, a panelist during the period 1952-61...
...It was the first time the nation's most influential news show had conferred the high honor since the stepping down of another broadcasting great, Joe Garagiola, on January 12, 1973...
...One could never tell where he stood on what he was reading...
...EST...
...Unfortunately this massive salute, combining the best of live and dead television, left little time for any thoughtful analysis of Frank Blair the journalistic monument...
...The producers finally selected the best of these films and ran them in public for the first time that memorable morning-another Today exclusive, so to speak...
...All of these quirks may be why some observers felt Blair was not fully awake in the mornings the last 10 years or so...
...Except for Charles Van Doren...
...I kept wondering during the two-hour salute where those men might have been now if they hadn't wanted greater challenges or possessed whatever illusions of grandeur were necessary for them to give up the seemingly professionally unrewarding mini-news report...
...and Mrs...
...He is never mentioned in the lists of achievements the NBC News publicity apparatus grinds out to mark turning points in broadcast history, like the retirement of Frank Blair...
...To fill the two hours before everybody but Van Doren and Muggs sang "Auld Lang Syne," officially ending one more chapter in the annals of electronic journalism, Today ran a selection of home movies produced by Blair over the last decade in the sophisticated basement studio of his famed Connecticut waterfront house...
...One news critic high up in government used to say of Chet Huntley that he read the news straight but raised his eyebrows at certain phrases or words and thus engaged in a form of editorializing...
...The ton of footage he eventually schlepped into the Rockefeller Center studios showed him being a glamorous person, and others who had appeared on Today as well, including a singing dog...
...But otherwise it seemed that just about all the legendary greats were on hand to laud Blair...
...This time, however, the beloved Blair is gone for good—or bad, depending on one's view...
...After all, they aren't very alert in the mornings either...
...Instead, NBC presented numerous prerecorded messages of praise from such dignitaries as Bob Hope, Dean Rusk, and General Mark Clark, a personal friend from South Carolina...
...He occupied it with distinction, if relatively briefly, displaying gifts as a conversationalist, interviewer and wit that are only now being duplicated by the current second banana, Gene Shalit...
...Present in the studio to pay their obligatory respects were NBC News personalities John Chancellor, the Today host in 1961, and Edwin Newman, a frequent visitor on the show...
...America, ABC's rival early-morning enlightenment...
...listeners asked...
...His decision to retire has been attributed to a desire to spend more time with his family...
...It was almost as if he intuitively sensed that people listened as slowly as he talked...
...Blair was unique compared to his predecessors...
...After a Congressional investigation or two about the staging of quiz shows in the late 1950s, Van Doren was suddenly gone...
...At its best, the national weather is an iffy subject...
...His longevity as a newsman will be studied closely by TV scholars in years to come...
...On a Boat with My Family...
...The most fitting salute to this great institution would have been a whole Today composed of the best of Blair's news reports over the last 22 years...
...Personally, what I will miss most about him are his weather reports...
...Dave Garroway tried to come back...
...Van Doren is as much a nonperson at NBC as fallen Kremlin leaders are in the USSR...
...at its worst, it can be viewed as another handout from a government organ, in this case the U.S...
...No, I suspect the Blair era of TV journalism hasn't ended yet...
...Although I thought it was Spiro Agnew who made the complaint, a network official explained that it couldn't have been him...
...He was so stiff and spare of expression, it was rumored that he was born in the shadow of Mt...
...And from time to time he forgot to read the time, a cause of anguish to the Today control room because the staff took real pride in producing a show that moved as smoothly as a Swiss watch...
...Leaving TV by way of the Today show has proven to be one of the least permanent forms of retirement...
...Rushmore...
...What have you done with Frank Blair...
...Whenever he went away on vacation the show was inundated with complaints...
...Blair was one of TV's great news readers, his major function since replacing Jim Fleming, the first Today news announcer (from January 14, 1952 to March 20, 1953) and Merrill Mueller (March 23-July 31, 1953...
...For one thing, he read the news very slowly...
Vol. 58 • April 1975 • No. 8
