ABC's Wider World of News

The evening-newscast ratings were moribund and staff morale was low, when an ambitious young executive from the network's entertainment side took over the news division. Suddenly, conventional journalistic techniques were replaced with show-business razzmatazz. Good men were pushed aside. The ratings soared. Money poured in.

Sound familiar? It happened in Paddy Chayefsky's movie Network, and some observers of television were wondering last week if life would be making reruns out of art. In a move long-bruited, Roone Arledge, the energetic president of ABC Sports, was put in charge of the network's news division. Arledge will retain his sports job and succeed ABC News President William Sheehan, who last year hired Barbara Walters for $1 million a year to co-anchor the Evening News with Harry Reasoner. Sheehan is being demoted to senior vice president for news.

Networks maintain lavish news operations for prestige more than profit, but ABC News' poor ratings have been something of an embarrassment for the network, which this winter took a commanding lead over CBS and NBC in prime-time entertainment ratings. For the month ending May 1, ABC's nightly newscast had an average audience share of only 17%, a point lower than the average share for the month before Walters arrived last fall. By contrast, CBS'S evening-news share rose from 29 to 30 and NBC's from 25 to 26.

Despite periodic shake-ups at the top of ABC News, the network has never taken television journalism as seriously as its rivals have. When ABC was No. 3 across the board, that attitude may have seemed more tolerable. But no longer, now that ABC has become No. 1 in entertainment. Morale at ABC News has been slipping in the face of continued bad ratings, incessant rumors about the future of Walters and Reasoner, and what is perceived as an ambiguous commitment to quality coverage. Even Arledge concedes the network's failing: "ABC's reputation in the past has been to provide coverage, but as little as they could get away with." Fred Friendly, Edward R. Murrow Professor of Journalism at Columbia University, is harsher: "They do a lousy, chintzy job."

Neither adjective can be applied to Roone Pinckney Arledge. Born 45 years ago in Forest Hills, N.Y., he graduated from Columbia, worked briefly at NBC and was hired as a sports producer by ABC in 1960. Since then he has brought such innovations as instant replay, hand-held and isolated cameras, directional and remote microphones. He is responsible for the successful Wide World of Sports and for Howard Cosell, a little-known New York attorney when Arledge hired him in 1965. In the first quarter of this year, Arledge's programming gave ABC the seven top-rated week-end sports programs on week-end television.

Arledge works hard for his pay. He is on the road three weeks out of four, personally field-produces major sports events like the Olympics, and makes heavy use of the direct telephone line from his home in Manhattan to the ABC sports remote unit. His wife divorced him in 1971 some time after he dashed off to stage-manage the Texas-Arkansas football game, leaving her stranded on a Hawaiian vacation. Arledge plays as hard as he works, jetting from spa to spa, shooting billiards with Joe Namath, partying with Ethel Kennedy, and doing everything but leap through airport lobbies with OJ. Simpson. Arledge's only quiet diversions are cooking and news. Says he: "I watch the news more than anything on TV except sports, and I read 50 different newspapers and magazines a week. I'm a news freak."

Arledge says he has not yet decided how to go about improving ABC news, but he sketched a few possibilities last week. He plans to spend more money on salaries and equipment, and make greater use of portable video cameras, live satellite transmission and other new technology more common on sports programs than on newscasts. "The concept of anchor people sitting in New York with the news flowing through them is outdated," he says. "I'd like to have anchor desks in New York, Washington, Europe or anywhere there's a story."

Other possible changes include more attention to background reports and news analysis ("We cover conferences of OPEC ministers, but I'm not sure the average person knows what OPEC is"), nightly minibiographies of people in the news, a "flying squad of expert reporters" that could be dispatched to cover major stories, and a greater emphasis on investigative reporting.

Drive and Flair. Arledge is mute on the much discussed matter of whether Walters and Reasoner will remain together, but few at ABC expect any immediate changes. The bad feelings between the pair are less apparent on the air nowadays--thanks in part to a reduction in their unscripted chitchat and fewer camera shots of them together, glaring at each other.

ABC news may not be transfigured overnight, but those who know Arledge's drive and flair for making audacious and ultimately correct gambles at ABC Sports predict that he will not shirk from sweeping changes. Years before his news-division predecessor shelled out $ 1 million for Barbara Walters, Arledge in 1969 staked $9 million of ABC's money on the unlikely prospects of Monday-night football, and later he bid an unprecedented $25 million for rights to the 1976 Olympics --both long shots that came home handsomely. Such opportunities may not seem so obvious in general news, but it is hard to imagine Arledge not bidding on the Nixon-Frost interviews--figuring them cheap at the price, as they have turned out to be. CBS and NBC news executives may soon find themselves playing hardball with a pro.

Arledge predicts merely that he will build "the best news organization with the best people," and that ABC will not go the way of Network, which he saw and enjoyed. "Some people think I'm going to jazz things up," he says. "Well, I've never had much of a reputation for show business. There won't be any dancing girls on the evening news."

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