Anchors Away?
FRANK, REUVEN
On Television Anchors Away? By Reuven Frank SINCE network television began, on May 1,1948,11 Presidents have sat in the White House. During that time, there have been seven evening news...
...were they providing a more desirable audience lead-in to David Letterman as part of the deal that kept him from leaving to replace Ted Koppel at ABC...
...The first of them, Dave Garroway, communicated with audiences as few others could...
...British history records the same problem facing the aging Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, waiting for his mother, Queen Victoria, to die...
...And would I be the Queen of the May...
...George to John Charles Daly...
...It does appear to be an astounding decision at a time when the audience for network news, and for the suppertime newscast in particular, is shrinking...
...Rather is now older than Cronkite was in '82, and has served longer, but CBS fears that if he goes the audience will go with him...
...their networks are afraid to let them go...
...When that ends, but only when that ends, it will be: Goodnight, Dan...
...They have expected some sort of final curtain...
...slot and replacing them with fast-paced cop shows —cop shows "skew" younger and "maler" (you follow all these words, don't you...
...Those who work in network news have long worried about the consequences of the nightly newscast's decline in ratings, in income and, especially, in the internal pecking order...
...From that point on, the network anchor has not only dispensed the evening news but guided the citizenry through primaries and election nights...
...But they are not network news anchors, any more than are those who do the news in other countries...
...Pulitzer Prize-winning columnists are not interrupted at dinner in a restaurant by fans seeking autographs—except for those who appear on TV a lot...
...It was greeted as "unheard-of," "epochmaking," "precedent-shattering...
...Only a few noticed the implied "vice versa...
...For instance, those presiding over morning shows are not news anchors although they are sometimes called that...
...There are other special skills, possibly as rare, but not quite the same...
...In 1982 Roger Mudd was widely accepted as Cronkite's heir, until Roone Arledge, president of ABC News, tried to lure Dan Rather away...
...The term "anchor" itself was first coined, or borrowed, for a quite different job, by producer Don Hewitt when he described Walter Cronkite as "anchoring" CBS' coverage of the 1952 national political conventions...
...The British have "presenters...
...An American anchor, by contrast, must burnish his reporter's credentials regularly or viewers will think he is reading what someone else wrote...
...Today's anchors, with half the audiences but 10 times the salaries, are fixed in place...
...The Wall Street Journal Op-Ed page called it "nuclear...
...For example, when CBS, looking for what its top executives did not blush to describe as a "cooler" and "edgier" tone, moved the septuagenarian Rather out of 48 Hours and renamed it 48 Hours Investigates, did that mean CBS was dissing the traditional approach to TV news...
...Not right away, but certainly after one more Presidential campaign...
...Second, what if the entertainment they pick to fill the time earns even smaller profits...
...Williams, NBC's White House correspondent for several years, was its lead man behind Brokaw on many flying ventures and its substitute anchor during Brokaw's numerous absences, including a 10-week stint in the summer of 2001...
...Rather and Brokaw and Jennings, old and familiar and respected...
...They are at ease on television, but others are more so...
...The last prompted suspicions Tom would be the first network news anchor since Chet Huntley to hang up his spikes of his own volition...
...MSNBC or Fox...
...Almost every American newspaper found room somewhere for Rather's new three-year arrangement with CBS, and for the report that ABC had asked Peter Jennings to take a cut from his reported $10 million annual income...
...Details of his compensation were not revealed, but it was understood to be substantial, even by today's inflated standards...
...The other half of the NBC announcement, that Brian Williams had signed for seven years and would succeed Brokaw, may mean what it said or may not...
...However, Wil Hams—or his agent—seems to have learned well enough to put not his trust in princes...
...ANCHOR1NG NEWS is a special skill...
...then NBC need only pay off Williams in accordance with the terms of his contract and go on conducting its business for business reasons...
...The networks are a click away from CNN...
...His reference was to the big fat guy who anchors each team in a tug of war...
...News is less popular than it was, and the networks are fearful of displacing famous names...
...Furthermore, in the six out of seven American households that now have cable, all television is cable...
...Just as newspapers announce big news with big headlines, on TV, you know it is major when Dan or Tom or Peter arrive on the scene...
...Whatever happened, Williams is not only under contract for seven years and guaranteed he will replace Brokaw as the NBC Nightly News anchor...
...When such talk leaks into the open, network bosses are quick to deny that the evening news is on the way out...
...CBS headed that off by the usual network maneuver: Cronkite was moved aside and Rather was made anchor...
...No presenter or speakerine quits the studio to go to Afghanistan or Ramallah or Rome...
...Sometimes they fly and there is no news...
...Nevertheless, Dave's morning successors are currently cocks of the walk, with the biggest salaries, the most fame, the spiciest gossip...
...News is the one thing networks actually do...
...Goodnight...
...Anchors, though, are news in ways that other journalists are not...
...same holds true for Tom Brokaw and Peter Jengs...
...The Los Angeles Times observed that Williams fit "the traditional network anchor model...
...The term itself didn't take...
...If there is still money to be squeezed out of network nightly news, it lies with them...
...In 1982, when Cronkite was deemed too old and to have served too long, Dan Rather replaced him...
...Experience shows this helps the ratings, too...
...Mudd left for NBC...
...As anchors replaced each other, thejob grew...
...German TV news is also read mostly by women...
...What is it about network anchors...
...The early transitions were easy, from Douglas Edwards to Walter Cronkite, from John Cameron Swayze to Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, from Dorian St...
...That Williams was growing restless was obvious both inductively and deductively...
...As generations fold into each other, the younger ones—that is, those who watch television news at all—are turning increasingly to the 24-hour cable news channels...
...a serious white man who wears impeccable suits...
...Their instinct was proved correct at NBC's hastily called press conference announcing that Brokaw had signed up to stay only through November 2004...
...No matter how large the so far unrevealed penalty, it would be trivial compared to the costs of keeping an uneconomical program on the air...
...Habits may be hard to break, but the viewers subject to them are aging and inevitably passing on...
...For half a century, the men who brought the evening news represented stability in a fractious and precarious time...
...Then Arledge had lunch with Brokaw, and NBC replaced John Chancellor...
...It is always awkward when journalists themselves become the news...
...The negative publicity for the first network to end the news at suppertime would be worse than the Koppel mess...
...The articles ranged from windy dissertations in the Columbia Journalism Review and the New York Times Magazine to better considered disquisitions in papers like the Chicago Tribune andNewsday, with the trade press adding to the accumulating din...
...Perhaps advice was sought from Roger Mudd...
...A hundred or even 50 years from now, how will some social anthropologist explain their role in American society, 1950-2010...
...NBC Nightly News will end...
...For anchors, reporting Presidential election nights verges on bringing the tablets down from Sinai, and Brokaw will do it one more time...
...If news defines networks, anchors are their public face...
...Besides recapitulations, prognostications and speculations there were, of course, questions...
...What is their place in our culture...
...Were they shamans or soothsayers or medicine men, the voice of the common man or the voice of authority...
...the French give the job almost exclusively to women, called "speakerines"—to rhyme with "magazines...
...All three network news audiences plus cable barely equal one night's audience for the Huntley-Bvinkley Report in its best days...
...NBC Nightly News would be anchored by Brian Williams—or by nobody...
...Some call them pretty boys, but there certainly are handsomer specimens...
...The networks' insurance remains the anchors in place...
...When the chief White House correspondent of the Boston Globe is on vacation, few people notice that someone else is reporting on the President's day...
...everything else they buy...
...Or, as they prepared for the coming TV season by shifting "older-skewing" news magazines out of the 10-11 p.m...
...Do "cooler" and "edgier" network honchos dig "dissing...
...They leave it to resident correspondents, some of whom may even speak the local language, to report what is happening in faraway places...
...At the moment, what they are is capable journalists, but not the most capable of all...
...No television news anchor's contract has ever contained such a clause...
...Don't even think about it...
...The New York Times thought it important enough for Page One, where it ran alongside stories about a landmark Supreme Court decision expanding states'rights, NATO's formal acceptance of Russia as a partner, and the FBI director's plans for reorganizing his bureau...
...Brian...
...He also authenticates important events by his presence...
...Would the suppertime newscast be with us forever...
...So little happened that they skipped Gorbachev's next trip, to Beijing, missing the first days of the uprising in Tiananmen Square...
...Anyone in his position would be...
...Goodnight, Peter...
...Was Koppel now as secure as Fasteeth...
...In whatever capacity they function, are they about to disappear...
...The salary of the Washington Post's principal editorial writer is not public gossip...
...No wonder the whole industry buzzed after an NBC executive told the Times, "There are penalty payments but also a powerful clause that if this doesn't happen then the broadcast comes off the air...
...If for any reason he is denied that chair, or is pushed out of it during those seven years, there will be no such program...
...When in 1951 NBC's late programming genius, Sylvester L. "Pat" Weaver, had the radical idea of doing television at 7 a.m., he called the host a "communicator...
...But when NBC announced at a hurriedly assembled press conference that Tom Brokaw would sign a new contract that has him leaving his chair after the 2004 Presidential election, it was the top of the news everywhere...
...That makes the commitment to Williams all the more surprising...
...There are two reasons: No one dares be first...
...Still, tens of millions of the country's breadwinners need them to be informed of what went on during the workday...
...So it's, Fly me to the news...
...Yes, they interview world leaders, but they also help at cooking demonstrations, hang out with rock bands and chitchat with movie stars...
...In 1989, they flew to Havana for Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev's visit to Fidel Castro...
...NBC's May 28 press conference in 8-H, the studio David Sarnoff built for Arturo Toscanini, stilled the persistent rumors that Williams might go to CBS— if not to replace Rather right away, at least to bide his time meanwhile in the strenuous yet highly visible role of host of their morning program, a vacancy created by Bryant Gumbel's exit...
...For a while, 9/11 halted talk of the end of suppertime news, even among those who staff the three shows, but it is now back stronger than ever...
...If it is decided that the 30 minutes devoted to the evening news can be put to better (read more profitable) use...
...To those millions, they are the news...
...During that time, there have been seven evening news anchors at NBC, seven at ABC and merely four at CBS, even if you include Connie Chung's 15 minutes as Dan Rather's coanchor...
...That was the year ABC News picked every anchor except its own...
...Moreover, the role they play is uniquely American...
...Goodnight, Tom...
...Then, in a sudden burst, this spring everyone was writing about network news anchors...
...All the tension ended as NBC made public in 8-H—its closest approximation to the Sistine Chapel—the newsmaking contract it had given Williams...
Vol. 85 • July 2002 • No. 4
