On Television
KITMAN, MARVIN
Onlelevision IF I HAD MY RATHERS. by marvin kitman T JL. he announcement that Walter Cronkite is retiring next year is the worst news I have heard since Pearl Harbor. I've made a lot of fun of...
...I also think there is something obscene about the money an anchorman is paid...
...But that bit of information would only confuse TV viewers, most of whom are congenital confusees...
...This time, however, Cronkite's rendition of "I've Got the Four Year Blues" was cut short...
...Rather was named the winner of the struggle for Cronkite's spot...
...Arledge wanted him for ABC at any cost...
...He is charismatic where so many of the younger TV journalists are asthmatic...
...Walter has grown from a father figure to grandfather figure right before our eyes...
...they hated him for that...
...After Mudd stressed the closeness of the race, Walter came back with, "close only counts in horseshoes and hand-grenades...
...In any case, if I had my rathers, I'd rather have Dan Rather the investigative reporter out there reacting with a real heart and real tears in his eyes to the way things really are...
...Reporters do all the hard work, and they should get the big salaries...
...In appearance, he is an FBI director figure...
...He is a good man??competent, bright, energetic, a hard-nosed investigative reporter...
...Not long ago, a poll discovered that he was trusted by 73 per cent of the American people, more than any other man and far more than the President...
...Somehow this has inspired faith...
...The very idea was unthinkable...
...Mudd has given the best years of his life to CBS News...
...Walter's real achievement, though, has been surviving so long...
...Whenever the old newshorse Walter tried, he became the event...
...Where was the laugh track when we needed it...
...The rival heirs apparent were Dan ("Mr...
...He has had a long tryout (he joined CBS in 1962) and is probably ready to fill Walter's shoes...
...The mistake Mudd made was not calling a press conference when they told him he had won...
...I don't know about you, but I won't believe World War III has come until he tells me so...
...The affiliates built it into a crime of passion...
...Being the most respected and powerful man in the nation has its psychic rewards, too...
...He is the guillo-tineer, the guy who takes assignments that require nerves of steel...
...Watergate hadn't happened until Walter said so...
...It's some world when a Jane Pauley??who has to be told by a director speaking through an electronic device in her ear when to move to the left or right??makes as much money as the president of General Motors...
...The one instance of indecisiveness throughout his long career has been his handling of the Cronkite retirement story...
...Reality: It hasn't really happened unless he reports it...
...Sinai today with the Ten Commandments...
...So, too, were many at CBS News and at the network headquarters, Black Rock, where guessing his replacement had become a favorite parlor game...
...There is no longer any reality beyond the tube...
...You and I know that Joe DiMaggio is the famous former center fielder of the New York Yankees...
...Mudd helped Teddy prove that if there is something worse than being inarticulate, it's being just plain dumb...
...They reminded me of the Nationalist Army on the island of Formosa, which Chiang Kai-shek was for years going to unleash against the mainland Communists...
...Without Walter to oversee things, I once wrote, there wouldn't have been a space program, and without the space program we wouldn't have Tang, Teflon or the Papermate (anti-gravity) PowerPoint, with which I am now writing...
...He is the man who pushes the button with his eye over the Nor-den bomb site in a B-19...
...But he may be paying a heavier price than CBS...
...The three most important are . . ." Moreover, the little that Walter tells us he shades with his tone of voice...
...For the life of me I can't understand why anchormen get a dime more than good TV reporters...
...Among Walter's other inventions were the three-month vacation and the patented line, "And that's the way it is...
...They do nothing...
...He had thrilled viewers by showing a little??just this much??pique while questioning President Nixon...
...He was so vague...
...Eventually, the average age of his soldiers was 89...
...The infighting between Cronkite and Mudd has long been one of my favorite minor sports on television, and I'm sure Walter had his fine Italian hand in there somewhere...
...Coffee, who became so rich making 56 cups of coffee without spilling a drop that he now owns a bank on the Bowery...
...Have you ever wondered where the articulate, experienced, well-trained newsmen go when they've disappeared from the air at the peak of their powers...
...If I find that alarming, it is because of what it suggests about the major changes that have taken place over the past 18 years in how things are perceived...
...At 48 he still sounds like a smart kid-brother figure, the wise one who asks the Emperor about his new clothes...
...As somebody at CBS once said, if TV had existed on the day the Ten Commandments were handed down, the lead on the Evening News would have been: "Moses came down Mt...
...That historic event took place on the night of October 27, when he left his desk to point to some graphics during an unusually long (14 minutes) segment on Watergate...
...If the world were to blow up tomorrow, CBS News would get an 88 per cent share of the ratings: Practically everyone would be watching Walter for assurance that it is all right...
...But he has remained suave, informed and attractively comfortable sitting in the same position every night for 23 minutes (the actual time of a 30-minute broadcast) reading the news ??now in larger type on the Teleprompt-er...
...From time to time, I heard those silly rumors about Walter wanting to retire someday...
...Like their namesakes in the water, they just sit there and watch the world around them bob up and down...
...I have mixed feelings about Dan Rather's rise to the top...
...He has a gift for making bad news sound not so bad...
...By his own account, Rather regards himself as "a line reporter," and he says that is what "I hope to continue to be...
...The ABC Nightly News with Dan Rather could be a winner...
...Yet it is unlikely that he will be able to leave the studio to cover a story...
...But Walter doesn't dig up the news...
...I was sure he was playing the same game this year...
...This was the first of a two-part report that Katharine Graham of the Washington Post said was responsible for turning Watergate from a local into a national news story...
...Their friction would always heat up during Presidential primary season...
...In fact, though, Walter has been telling us only some of the way it is...
...The image the anchorman conjures up today is closer to that of George Washington on the dollar bill, for the higher his ratings the more dollars come into the network...
...These men had been leading candidates for so long they were graying heirs apparent...
...Before Watergate, Rather used to be known in the profession as Old Stone-face...
...Similarly, Walter is Mr...
...The Nixon story, Rather's shining hour, took something out of him: warmth...
...It was the first of its kind at the West 57th Street studios since they had breathlessly disclosed the acquisition of Sally Quinn for the CBS Morning News...
...Money was no object...
...News is no longer the public service drag it was in the era before Sir Walter...
...The emergence of ABC News as a serious competitor had altered the musical score...
...The more stories they uncover, the more they should earn...
...After 20 years rehearsal time, Teddy couldn't remember the answer...
...Six months earlier the brass had told him, "Don't worry, you're it...
...There is always some excuse for getting rid of a David Schoenbrun or a Daniel Schorr...
...I'm sure he would have agreed to serve as an anchor for less, maybe even for as little as $300,000 a year...
...Once it became apparent that Rather had a deal with ABC, officials at CBS News hastily called a press conference...
...He is human, after all...
...As an anchorman, Rather's financial reward will be more obscene than Walter's (adjusted, as they say, for inflation)??a supposed $8 million over a five-year period...
...None of this is Walter's fault, of course...
...JLt the press conference, Cronkite declared that he had no hand in the selection of his successor...
...It wasn't until 1972, in fact, that Walter ever stood up...
...One wonders about CBS News' word...
...Tact") Rather and Roger ("Teddy's ex-friend") Mudd...
...Rather was one of the most nubile of the availables...
...He was obviously just testing the waters, seeing how much we loved him...
...He can also make good news sound grave...
...Getting into the boats alone would have killed them...
...It could be argued that big-shot anchormen nevertheless serve the community as moral authorities, but they are no longer looked upon as Martin Bu-bers...
...I remember them bumping each other against the boards while analyzing the 1976 Florida primaries...
...He was the heir apparent for so long he was known as Grecian Formula No...
...The announcement had all the romance of a shotgun wedding, with Rather holding the shotgun...
...To them he is Mr...
...But it's hard to imagine him becoming a father figure, not to mention grandpa...
...Under the direction of Roone Arledge, ABC has been employing a full court press against CBS??hounding it, dogging it, hiring anything not nailed down...
...Now they were saying, "Worry, you're not it...
...I've made a lot of fun of Crankase, as I sometimes call him, during his 18 years as anchorman of the CBS Evening News...
...The best and the brightest are usually dumped when they are no longer young (18-49 in TV land...
...They're all up on the roofs of the CBS, RCA and ABC buildings in New York, talking to the heavens about possible coverage of the hereafter...
...And when it was rumored that Roger Mudd had already been promised Walter's job, Rather's agent, despite his client's loyalty to CBS, began to negotiate with the opposition...
...He said he wouldn't be back for the '76 elections, for example, but there he was...
...I became a serious Mudd fan following his interview with Ted Kennedy last November, the one in which the candidate shot himself in the foot with his mouth...
...after running into trouble sticking his nose into that story, he had the look of crushed rock...
...Roger asked the best question of the decade: "Why do you want to be President...
...And in friendship, Walter...
...He promised him Staten Island...
...A Jl...
...Walter's reported annual wage is $650,000...
...A terror with the checkbook, he has been carrying off CBS personnel like Sabine women ??without the screams...
Vol. 63 • March 1980 • No. 5
