Morning Mistakes at CBS
KITMAN, MARVIN
On Television MORNING MISTAKES AT CBS BY MARVIN KITMAN I love Charlie Kuralt on television. He is a man of unusual intelligence, a sensitive human being and a very good reporter with an eye for...
...With his face filling the screen he seems bigger than life, to put it politely...
...additional commentators are coming in landing barges...
...Green Jeans to counterbalance Ms...
...Having her come into my bedroom all dressed up at that ungodly hour is positively embarrassing...
...After all, commercial television is the medium that has made American children's first words after "Momma" and "Poppa," "Only $19.95," and "Batteries Not Included...
...or any other time of day is a close-up...
...It wasn't so long ago that Kuralt was the heir apparent to King Walter's crown...
...The fact is that last year, when Captain Kangaroo was allowed to waste valuable air time and be the only real children's show on for a whole hour, the network netted $249 million...
...She probably was a whiz working for President Nixon-her former deadbeat...
...Remember, we're talking about the only preschool children's program aired by a commercial network during weekdays, and a national institution for 25 years to boot...
...Another victim of the Kuralt overkill is Captain Kangaroo, whose time has been cut and changed...
...The competitors must have felt some kinship with Chiang Kai-shek's Army waiting to retake the mainland?before they knew it, everybody was 87...
...You have to wonder, though, what she is doing with Kuralt...
...The truncated, earlier Captain Roo is not the same...
...I don't pretend to understand the mentality of TV news executives...
...It's the grand slam of wrong moves to knock off Charlie Kuralt and Captain Kangaroo in one stroke...
...He is a man of unusual intelligence, a sensitive human being and a very good reporter with an eye for what is warm and interesting...
...Meanwhile, they have started showing close-ups of Kuralt-apparently unaware that Mornings already is otherwise sufficiently different from Today and Good Morning America, where they wisely rely on medium shots of the anchor people or hosts...
...The networks have tons of fancy research "proving" that kids want violent cartoons, that they prefer it to all other kinds of children's programing...
...Then, last year, CBS made him do this five more times a week, at 7:00- 8:00 a.m., as if a single mortal would not have enough trouble writing, reporting and producing his special pieces once every seven days...
...Now they do, and the Nielsens for Morning with Charles Kuralt and Diane Sawyer are falling as morbid curiosity seekers resume watching the radio to start the day...
...Witness the Dan Rather/Walter Cronkite fiasco...
...Children's programing today is a national disgrace...
...Oh, brother-mr...
...Yes, that was CBS' pro/it, after all the direct program costs and expense accounts and limos and parties and flowers for starlets and extra carrots for Bunny Rabbit...
...Ray Gandolf, sportsman, looks as if he saw a ghost...
...I'm a gentleman, too...
...I'm really angry about what they've done to Keeshan, my favorite military man on TV...
...Second Lieutenant Kangaroo now works part time, beginning at 7:00 a.m...
...But that's all they have been seeing...
...Teams of psychiatrists and creative artists-the best minds money could buy-were hired to explore new realms...
...In any case, no more carrots for Bill Leonard, the head of CBS News, where they haven't been doing anything right lately...
...The news is depressing enough without having to see Charlie pining away as if he' U never be able to go on the open road again...
...The intensive publicity heralding her arrival made her seem just what Kuralt needed in the mornings-a regular Charlie's angel...
...Help is on the way, I'm told...
...Gordon Barnes always has had the worst weather...
...A real professional, she clearly knows the red light on the camera means you' re on the air...
...time slot on Sunday, ratings never seemed to matter...
...Another statistic in the same vein is my current favorite: Over a two-year period, a professor recently asked children between the ages of four and six, "Which do you like better, TV or Daddy...
...How could they want what they haven't seen...
...Those poor victims over at CBS are breaking my bleeding heart...
...Charlie is going to get it in the neck...
...I'll bet she is making women at home in their bathrobes and curlers feel inadequate...
...In the late '70s, do-gooders at the networks supposedly tried to break the cycle of violent cartoons for kids...
...I didn't even peek at the lengthened show for the first few days, to give CBS a chance to work out the kinks...
...As a matter of fact, a morticians' convention would be livelier...
...Don't tell me more...
...The old hour-long Captain Kangaroo was just about the sole contribution to children that commercial television was making...
...Tight Jeans and the other chazzerei they watch...
...No tape recorder would have dared miss 18 minutes had she been on the job at the time of Watergate...
...Relentless in their search to find new forms of exciting children's shows, the networks cried, "Give us anything wild and free form?so long as it's a cartoon...
...Not knowing that is what undid the last female anchor CBS News discovered for the morning slot, according to Sally Quinn's self-analysis-which just goes to show the limitations of self-analysis...
...I want my kids and everybody else's to consider this wonderfully modest, relaxed, urbane gentleman a role model...
...The chemistry was so incredible, the flacks gushed...
...As it turned out, the last guy to come along got to be Cronkite's successor and that was that...
...The economic reporter person from Newsweek is grim...
...Charlie's stunning new partner, Diane Sawyer, doesn't fare too well under close scrutiny either...
...As for the new social commentator, Pat O'Brien, gabbing about the high style in Washington with the Reagans-she is not somebody I would want to sit next to at a dinner party if that is her usual line of chatter...
...Overload worsened to overkill when they added an extra 30 minutes to the already demanding hour...
...Come on...
...Live Wire himself...
...They owe the little ones something...
...Ever since September 28, when his show was lengthened to 90 minutes and a coanchor was added, he has started resembling a high-strung bull fiddle as he sits behind a music stand substituting for the traditional anchor desk or couch and coffee table on other networks...
...The characters still have their sketches, but they don't have the space to develop their unique, off-the-wall craziness...
...The gloom has affected the regulars Charlie brought with him from his deservedly praised CBS News Sunday Morning with Charles Kuralt (9:00 a.m.-10:30 a.m...
...Sawyer also speaks very s--l-o~w--l--y, enunciating every word for us sleepy heads who have trouble focusing our ears in the morning, while perfectly executing her carefully choreographed movements...
...Charlie is warmth personified on TV...
...Since September 28, Captain Kanga (they halved his time, so they should be allowed to use only half his name) has been on at 7:00 a.m...
...He is also a superb conversationalist and, as we know from the days when he was on the road in his van, an essayist of charm and wit...
...Baloney...
...Among the early arrivals: Eric Sevareid...
...The children of TV need the Captain, Mr...
...She looks so rich and blond and beautiful that any morning now I expect her to drop in for the news in a simple black dress and a single strand of pearls...
...Of course kids definitely prefer violent cartoons 8-1: Kids also prefer a malted to a glass of milk, and a Mounds bar to a carrot or a celery stick...
...The one kind of scrutiny Kuralt doesn't need at 7:30a.m...
...My kids and yours grew up less absurd because of Captain Kangaroo...
...for an hour, William S. Paley would have to take out a second mortgage on Black Rock or go to the poor house...
...And she knows the right people at the State Department-her former beat...
...His effort was an oasis, a true magazine on the air that won every award and everybody's admiration...
...She should run a country...
...Forty four per cent said they preferred television...
...Kuralt doesn't need any help...
...At the very least, what they've done to Kuralt is positively lunar...
...It's absolutely scary...
...But suddenly the executives recalled that ratings are the name of the game...
...they had to go to war against Today and Good Morning America...
...Diana is coolth...
...Unfortunately, his star was in the wrong house of the zodiac...
...The Captain (Robert Keeshan) and his co-stars are getting just as stiff and tense as Kuralt himself, in fact...
...True, she does have a lot to feel superior about...
...Yet, pow, Keeshan was cruelly shoved aside...
...I used to think nothing could top that...
...Maybe it's a gimmick meant to strike a more intellectual tone, something the average high-powered university president-presumably Kuralt's average viewer-can relate to...
...Sawyer is pompous, too...
...There couldn't be a worse time to start reducing television's commitment to the young...
...So what is CBS doing to him on Morning with Charles Kuralt and Diane Sawyer (7:30-9:00 a.m...
...They're tightening him up...
...It scares the heck out of me, a man who confines his playing to the TV set and the radio...
...Are they telling us that if they kept Captain Kangaroo on at 8:00 a.m...
...He probably made his move too early, not that angling to be Cronkite's successor was easy...
...He'll be blamed for the desertion of viewers, much the way Tom Snyder got tagged for the low ratings on Prime Time Sunday, Saturday and Friday...
...On January 28, 1979, Kuralt began doing a superb Sunday morning stretch that was a great public service: He provided an alternative to cartoons and religious programing for addicts who must have TV Sunday mornings...
...That's the only thing that sells...
...anyway...
...Moose, Bunny Rabbit, and Mr...
...Traditionally, the adult audience had been a lost cause for the network from 7:00-9:00 a.m...
...I caught a cold the first morning I watched her work...
...GivenKuralt's9:00-10:30A.m...
...Success hasn't made him lose weight or get a hairpiece...
...The stand is supposed to lend an air of casualness, and it does-if you're a musician...
...forahalf hour, instead of running from 8:00-9:00 a.m...
...By the end of the week I finally began tuning in, and what I have found is a far cry from NBC s 7b-day or ABC's Good Morning America...
...CBS will probably tell us their research division has discovered that kids are waking up earlier these days and have shorter attention spans...
...I was mistaken...
...With Keeshan's show, CBS was doing something for the kids instead of to them...
...The buzz word in broadcasting today is that its cosmic...
...CBS had been doing marvelously, earning kudos for keeping Captain Kangaroo on the air for 25 years and seemingly disregarding all the research on the popularity of violent cartoons, not to mention the realities of the marketplace...
Vol. 64 • November 1981 • No. 20
