Iron Chancellor

NBC has been trying to pick up the pieces of its nightly network newscast ever since Chet Huntley retired to Montana a year ago. What he and David Brinkley provided was a happy accident, a memorable blend of sonorous seriousness and acid wit. In their early ratings and in their personal chemistry, they were a hard act to follow. So hard, in fact, that last week NBC abandoned the plural approach to the evening news. For the first time in 15 years, it will go with a single anchor man. In mid-August, veteran Newsman John Chancellor gets the job.

He will replace an interim troika composed of himself, Brinkley and Frank McGee. NBC News President Reuven Frank insists that the change has nothing to do with ratings. (Since 1968, two years before Huntley left, CBS has had a small but respectable lead in the evening-news audience. The standings have not changed appreciably with the Chancellor-Brinkley-McGee format.)

Satchel for a Solo. By Frank's account, Hugh Downs, host of the Today show, was indirectly the catalyst for the news shakeup. Downs wanted a break to relax, write and lecture. "We would have kept going under the old format for another year," says Frank, but Downs was adamant about quitting. "I coaxed Frank McGee," Frank admits. McGee takes over Today in October. Brinkley, meanwhile, will assume the job of "commentator" for NBC News. Next month David Brinkley's Journal will be seen as a separate segment of most of the nightly newscasts, NBC's riposte to Eric Sevareid at CBS and Howard K. Smith at ABC. Brinkley will also do four one-hour specials a year.

Thoughtful and urbane, John Chancellor, 44, has a satchel of credentials for his new solo job. He broke into journalism in his home town, Chicago, as a copy boy for the Sun-Times. He was sacked during an economy drive in 1950 and took a temporary job with NBC as a news writer. He was soon signed on full time and found himself out on the streets covering fires and chasing criminals. When Monitor was started on NBC radio, Chancellor was among the first newsmen assigned to that novel and imaginative operation. Driving a mobile unit rigged to look like a police car, complete with a flashing red light and a siren, Chancellor stayed tuned to the police radio band and often beat the cops to the scene of the crime.

Among his notable achievements was his coverage of the Arkansas school integration fight in 1957, when the National Guard was ordered in to counteract Governor Orval Faubus' refusal to mix the classrooms. He impressed other newsmen with his solid judgment, laying it on the line about Faubus without being offensive. It was also an assignment that caught the eye of NBC network bosses in New York.

Chancellor won a reputation among his NBC colleagues as an "iron man" for talking 90 minutes nonstop on camera in November 1960 while he and the rest of the national press waited for John Kennedy to arrive at the Hyannis armory to make the presidential-election victory statement. During the 1964 Republican Convention, he was hustled bodily off the floor by a sergeant at arms attempting to clear the aisles. "It's awfully hard to remain dignified at a time like this," Chancellor ad-libbed. As he faded from the screen, he solemnly intoned: "This is John Chancellor, somewhere in custody."

Who's Being Skewered? In 20 years at NBC, Chancellor has emceed the Today show, covered five presidential campaigns and headed bureaus in Vienna, London, Moscow, Brussels and Berlin. He took a brief break from NBC from 1965 to 1967 to head the Voice of America. Despite his penchant for politics and hard news, Chancellor's interests also range to literature and music. Out of a job back in his early Chicago days, he decided he had not read enough. He took to his apartment for eight months, subsisting mainly on baked potatoes, to catch up on books. When he was notified of the Today show assignment in 1961, he took the call at the Opera House in Vienna where he was watching a performance of The Magic Flute.

Of his new assignment, Chancellor says: "The show is neater and easier to handle if one guy does the news, another guy gives you something memorable to take away." Plainly he is not averse to having Brinkley keep up regular appearances. "When David lets go, he really lets go," Chancellor thinks. "We hope people will be sitting out there wondering who's being skewered tonight." Undoubtedly, they will be.

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