The New Face of TV News

Dan Rather becomes CBS's $8 million man, as network journalism booms

For nearly three months he met regularly and secretly with top executives at each of the three commercial networks, hearing their offers, learning their plans. The process involved quiet breakfasts in obscure restaurants, drinks and dinner in one suitor's apartment and marathon conversations in hotel rooms. "I find myself in a long final glide path," he said last week. "Three runways are stretched out before me. All three are beautiful. I could land on any one and be extremely happy."

Dan Rather, 48, the intrepid newshound of CBS's 60 Minutes, had three offers he couldn't refuse. ABC, NBC and his own CBS each sought to make him its evening-news anchorman. Each asked him to help shape its newscast. And each, before the bidding was over, had offered a staggering reward if he would just sign up: $8 million spread over five years.

Two self-imposed deadlines for making a decision came and went. Lists of pros and cons littered Rather's Manhattan apartment. Before leaving for work last Wednesday he promised his wife Jean that he would make up his mind that day. At 60 Minutes' offices on West 57th Street, Rather consulted with Mike Wallace, Morley Safer and other CBS colleagues, then he met with NBC News President William Small. Late that night Jean Rather finally turned to him in their living room. "You were going to make a decision today," she said evenly. "You have 17 minutes left." At long last Rather was ready: "I am going to go with my gut. I'm going to go with CBS."

With those words he finally settled the question that had titillated the television world for years: Who would succeed Walter Cronkite, the best-known and most respected broadcast journalist of his era? Some time next year Cronkite's program will be rechristened the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, and like Cronkite, he will have the title of managing editor. Uncle Walter, 63, who chose to stay out of the selection process for his successor, plans to continue as anchor at least through the presidential inauguration next January. "I've inaugurated every President since Harry Truman," he said last week. "I want to do one more." After that he is planning to stay on at CBS doing documentaries, special assignments and a new science show, Universe.

The clear loser in all this is Roger Mudd, 52, who has been understudying Cronkite for the anchor role for almost a decade. But some CBS executives noted that Mudd, though an experienced Washington correspondent, has never worked overseas, is not the compliant sort of company man that CBS appreciates, and is thought by some at the network to appear a bit too stolid on the screen. Still, Mudd was so sure he had the job that he recently refused to fill in one week for Cronkite; he wanted to go skiing instead. "I think he overestimated his hand," says one colleague. Said Mudd, who may well leave the network: "The management of CBS and CBS News has made its decision on Walter Cronkite's successor, according to its current values and standards. From the beginning, I have regarded myself as a news reporter, not as a newsmaker or a celebrity."

By choosing Rather, CBS is gambling that the time has come for an electrifying anchorman rather than an avuncular one, a younger, more dynamic personality to replace an old familiar face. But also, the network really did not dare let him go; Rather is the one man in television who, working for a competitor, could conceivably demolish the house that Cronkite built. Ambitious and energetic, Rather is blessed with commanding presence and down-home charm. He has also turned out to be a man of abiding loyalties: "I know so many people at CBS, and I just could not bring myself to walk out that door and say, 'Goodbye. I've helped you. You've helped me. That's the way it goes.' "

Rather's dazzling contract, which took effect last week, makes him one of the two highest-paid broadcast journalists in the country, along with Cronkite. It also puts Rather in the rarefied company of TV entertainers like Johnny Carson ($3 million a year). That narrowing of the money gap between TV's news stars and its entertainment stars is perhaps only fitting. News is suddenly the hot act on TV. Information programs are beginning to rival sitcoms, shoot-'em-ups and other fictive fare for viewers and advertising dollars. The top-rated show on television this season is CBS's 60 Minutes: the investigatory escapades of Rather and fellow Correspondents Wallace, Safer and Harry Reasoner are seen by some 40 million Americans each Sunday evening. A celebrity-studded version of 60 Minutes, ABC's 20-month-old magazine show 20/20, has outdrawn its Thursday-night entertainment competition.

The networks' regular newscasts are playing to record audiences. At the end of 1979, the CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and ABC's World News Tonight were seen by a total of 56.3 million people each evening, an increase of 13% over the year before. Public television's MacNeil-Lehrer Report, an intelligent if placid interview show that follows the network news in most cities, now attracts 4 million viewers, up 20% from last year.

Not only are more people watching news, but there seems to be more news to watch these days: the earlier-than-ever presidential campaign, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and, most riveting of all, the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. That event inspired the first major expansion of nightly network news since CBS and NBC extended their evening reports from 15 minutes to half an hour in 1963. Shortly after the takeover, ABC launched an excellent nightly news special, The Iran Crisis: America Held Hostage, that has continued ever since. ABC will soon convert it to a regular 11:30 p.m. (E.S.T.) newscast; CBS and NBC are said to be considering late-night news programs of their own. Says PBS's Robert MacNeil: "TV has created a nation of news junkies who tune in every night to get their fix on the world."

The network news divisions, once money-losing sidelines maintained largely for reasons of prestige, are reportedly running in the black at CBS and NBC, and ABC News hopes to be profitable soon. Because news audiences are up by some 7 million viewers, the networks can charge advertisers more for commercials. Of course, costs have also risen (each network will spend upwards of $130 million on coverage this year, more than double the figure in 1975), but information programming remains far cheaper to produce than the entertainment variety. Consider the case of 60 Minutes: a one-hour installment typically brings in $1.6 million in advertising revenue but reportedly costs only $275,000 to produce, less than half the average cost of an hour-long entertainment program. Besides, as network executives are evidently learning, reality can be more entertaining than its imitation. Says CBS News President William Leonard: "There just isn't enough mediocrity to go around in the fiction area. In five years, I think more than 50% of programming will be informational."

In anticipation of that day, some enterprising TV documentary maker could weave a gripping, real-life drama from the inside story of how a revolution in TV news led to a multimillion-dollar bidding war for an anchorman. The individual most responsible for the revolution is, ironically, not basically a journalist at all. He is a 48-year-old television sports impresario known for his polka-dotted shirts and khaki safari jackets, flaming red hair and all but total inability to return phone calls. His name: Roone Arledge.

From the time Arledge joined ABC in 1960 (he became president of ABC Sports in 1968), almost everything he touched turned to gold: NCAA football, Wide World of Sports, Monday Night Football (with the ineffable Howard Cosell in the announcing booth), even the Battle of the Network Stars and all its banal offspring. Under his leadership, ABC bid millions to televise the Olympics and transformed the games into global theater. His use of multiple cameras, instant replay, slow motion, on-field microphones and other electronic gimmickry revolutionized sports coverage.

The television news community howled--partly in laughter, partly in protest--when Arledge became president of ABC News in June 1977. (He remains president of ABC Sports and is executive producer of the Lake Placid Winter Olympics.) Journalists feared that he would bring game-show hype to the evening news, as described so chillingly in Paddy Chayefsky's 1976 movie Network. Arledge did little to allay those suspicions when, shortly after taking over, he devoted 19 minutes of one 22 1/2-minute nightly newscast to a lurid account of the capture of an accused killer, the so-called Son of Sam.

Arledge and ABC News have come a long way since then. The razzle-dazzle special effects that Arledge imported from the sports division have been muted, or else copied by the competition. Barbara Walters, lured in 1976 from NBC with that notorious $1 million-a-year contract, has left the anchor duties to do interviews. Her incompatible coanchor, Harry Reasoner, has fled to CBS'S 60 Minutes. The man who has emerged as their replacement, experienced Newsman Frank Reynolds, 56, has given ABC's World News Tonight stability and style.

Arledge and Vice President Av Westin have been building up ABC's anemic corps of correspondents. Nowhere is the network's new reporting vitality more apparent than in its coverage of the embassy hostage crisis. ABC's Bob Dyk was the only network journalist on the scene in Tehran for four precious days, and ABC has since had more than its share of Iranian scoops. Partly as a result, the network has been nosing out NBC for second place in the evening-news ratings race with increasing regularity, and is even closing in on CBS, the longtime leader (see chart). "ABC is developing an authentic success," concedes Robert ("Shad") Northshield, executive producer of CBS's adventurous new Sunday Morning magazine show. "They are one hell of an outfit." Adds Press Critic Edwin Diamond: "Roone Arledge is Captain Success."

ABC's renaissance is being felt most acutely by NBC. That network was plagued by uncertain corporate and news leadership through most of the 1970s, and only last year began to get its administrative house in order. Facing mandatory retirement at CBS, Richard Salant, 65, signed on as vice chairman for news at NBC, which has no set retirement age. In August he recruited Bill Small, a hard-driving former CBS Washington bureau chief, to be president of NBC'S news division. Says Small: "We are going to be hiring producers, correspondents, whatever, to increase our bench strength."

Salant and Small have their hands full, and not only with the Nightly News, which has as its host the literate but low-key John Chancellor, 52. The network's eight-month-old magazine show, Prime Time Saturday with Tom Snyder, is floundering. In addition, the Today show, its once prolific profit maker (a reported $7 million last year), has lately slipped in the ratings behind ABC's Good Morning America, a homey mix of news, gossip, interviews and self-improvement tips. Today's own efforts to be more folksy and entertaining have only undermined its prestige. Recalls PBS's Bill Moyers, whose Journal is one of PBS's more thoughtful informational programs: "In the '60s, the show helped set the public affairs agenda for the U.S."

CBS remains television's finest news organization by a wide margin. The network's news executives liken their 1,000-member staff to a ball club with superior depth at every position. With so many good people around, however, CBS is slow to provide challenges and advancement. Says Fred Friendly, former CBS News president and now a Columbia University journalism professor: "What producers and reporters want more than anything else is to get on the air. If another network can promise that, throw away the school tie."

That is precisely what ABC's Arledge has been promising many CBS and NBC journalists. He has lured 29 on-camera reporters and 20 producer-directors from the other networks. CBS is hardest hit, losing 17 to the Arledge recruiting drive, including Correspondents Hughes Rudd, John Laurence, Barry Serafin and Sylvia Chase, as well as off-camera stars like Richard Kaplan, a talented producer with the Cronkite team. Admits one CBS hand: "We're hemorrhaging."

If CBS was slightly casual about losing people to other networks, it pulled out all the stops when word got out that Rather was talking to Arledge. Losing Cronkite to retirement would be hard enough without having to butt heads with the formidable Rather. No one had to be reminded that CBS opened up its ratings lead only when Chet Huntley retired in 1970 from NBC's Huntley-Brinkley Report.

Cronkite first gained national repute at the 1952 political conventions, where CBS coined the term anchor to describe his role. In 1962, at age 45, he took over the evening news and gradually assumed a stature approaching the President's. Says Eric Sevareid, a former colleague at CBS who retired in 1977: "People see Cronkite as they used to see Eisenhower--the fellow next door who'd invite you to his backyard barbecue, and a world statesman at the same time."

Replacing him was unthinkable, and would-be successors--like Harry Reasoner, heir apparent in the late 1960s--either left or steeled themselves for a long wait. When Reasoner finally moved on, he remarked: "Walter Cronkite was showing no inclination toward stepping in front of a speeding truck."

By 1973, Roger Mudd had established himself as Cronkite's summer replacement and likely successor. But in the next years, the smart money began shifting to Rather. With his stints in London and Viet Nam, he had a broader range of experience. He got along better with superiors and subalterns. And he had a special air about him. "Star quality was important with Murrow, with Huntley and Brinkley and with Walter," says ABC'S Barbara Walters. "Dan has star quality too, and he is a good newsman."

The competition for Rather began last November, when CBS's Bill Leonard broached the subject of a long-term contract. Rather was already committed to the network until September 1981, but after the exodus of so many staffers CBS was in no mood to take chances. Rather's agent, Richard Leibner, advised him to shop around. Although the newsman claims he did not want a bidding war, he told Leibner to contact ABC and NBC.

Despite Rather's friendship with Bill Small at NBC, it quickly became a two-way contest between CBS and ABC. For a while, ABC was ahead. The flexibility there, the streamlined hierarchy, the willingness to experiment, all appealed to Rather. He was also highly impressed with Arledge, likening his energy and creativity to that of his boss at 60 Minutes, Executive Producer Don Hewitt.

But Rather was mindful that while ABC was becoming stronger, CBS already had legions of talented people. As a former network executive points out, "Without an organization like CBS behind him, Rather could find himself in the position of the cavalry captain who charges off against the enemy and discovers that he is out there all alone."

The bidding for Rather signaled more than a willingness to spend top money for top talent. For each of the networks, and especially CBS, it was an acknowledgment that perhaps the time had come for a fundamental shift in the way news is presented. Rather has a harder edge than any of his predecessors. He is not reassuring like Cronkite, not professorial like Chancellor, not chummy like Reynolds.

In effect, it was a multimillion-dollar gamble. The most authoritative measure of celebrity popularity, the Q ratings prepared by Marketing Evaluations Inc. on Long Island, N.Y., shows that Rather elicits a high positive response from more viewers than any of the other news personalities, including Cronkite. Still, that is no guarantee that he will do well on the evening news. The transition from Cronkite to Rather is certain to be jarring. Viewers also can be very quirky, if often uncannily accurate, in their judgments about anchors--whether they are trustworthy, capable, even decent. The key question is how well Rather will wear, whether he will be figuratively invited into living rooms as Cronkite is.

Rather knows that such invitations are not extended lightly. "It is a very strange chemistry," he says. "We know that intelligence, intensity, integrity--all of which help develop believability--are necessary. We know that a good reporter does not always make a good anchor and vice versa. Being a good writer is certainly handy, but the best writers are not the best anchormen."

As the Rather era dawns and the Cronkite age recedes, television news faces closer examination than ever before. Not since Viet Nam has the American public been so aware of TV's enormous impact--and its immensely frustrating shortcomings. Flickering images of mobs in Tehran mugging for cameramen, and the spectacle of Iranian leaders bypassing U.S. officials to speak with TV correspondents, have set off a debate over television diplomacy and the dangers of media manipulation. Special interests, whether they be farmers driving their tractors to the White House to demand price supports or students burning draft cards to protest conscription, continue to get television's eye simply by creating a commotion. Meanwhile, many pressing but complicated national issues, like energy and SALT, are often given only the most cursory treatment, in part because they defy simplistic pictorial presentations.

Television's intrusions into the political process have never been so obvious as they are in this presidential campaign. One of the landmark events of the election season has been Senator Edward Kennedy's woeful performance Nov. 4 in an interview with CBS's Roger Mudd. Had Kennedy given the same answers in print, a few pundits would have turned purple at his stumbling, but voters would have paid little notice. At the same time, TV can restore what TV taketh away; two weeks ago Kennedy received a gust of upbeat publicity by staging a telegenic mock debate against the tape-recorded voice of President Carter.

As striking as it can be when it covers a papal trip or wartime drama, television news is often unsatisfying. The reason has been the same since the first 15-min. broadcast in 1948: not enough time. "TV still basically indexes rather than reports the news," grouses Fred Friendly. Cronkite agrees: "I think we have been on a plateau. The only way we can improve the news measurably is to go to an hour. We need that desperately."

An hourlong newscast was seriously considered by all three networks in 1976; it faded when NBC abandoned the idea because of the unwillingness among its affiliate stations to yield half an hour of local time. Yet the stepped-up competition among the networks suggests that a reconsideration cannot be too far off.

The commercial networks will get a prod in the direction of providing more news come June, when Atlanta Braves Owner Ted Turner launches his Cable News Network. CNN will feature round-the-clock news highlighted by a prime-time broadcast from 8 to 10 p.m. The new network will also provide extensive coverage of sports and business, topics that get little attention on the major networks' evening news. Although a midget by commercial standards, CNN promises to be a feisty competitor, with seven domestic and three foreign bureaus reporting to its Atlanta headquarters. Turner has budgeted more than $20 million for the first year of operation and pledges to spend whatever is required to make CNN succeed.

ABC's rejuvenation has already substantially improved the quality of the network news on a night-to-night basis. The speed with which television reports events is a technological marvel. Says Bill Leonard of CBS: "TV has become like radio in its instant global capability. In the past two years, thanks to the satellite and the electronic camera [giving reporters the ability to transmit from the field], we have a capability that is immeasurably larger."

Television crews get better footage than ever because new lightweight videotape cameras, called minicams, give them greater mobility. Another important advance is the Chiron, a device that projects symbols, graphs and subtitles on the screen. The key words of a major speech can now easily be shown, and complicated economic stories can be untangled with Chiron-generated charts and tables. But doubts linger about how TV journalists will use their new technical skills. Bill Moyers places the challenge on Arledge's lap: "The test is whether Roone's talent for technology will be spent making the important interesting or the trivial acceptable."

The technological advances can have undesired side effects. In their zeal to get news fast and get it first, correspondents are sometimes forced to skip over stories that require much digging. "Strangely enough," says Rather, "the new competitiveness has not resulted in more stories being broken on the air."

Perhaps too much is expected of television. Because it can shrink the world with a satellite signal, people tend to think of it as a total journalistic service. "We are not," says Chancellor. "We could be on three hours a night and could not produce a Russell Baker column or an Art Buchwald piece or a Jeff MacNelly cartoon. Television is good at the transmission of experience. Print is better at the transmission of facts."

In addition, television has no equivalent of the editorial page, except for the uneven efforts at editorializing by local stations. There are also no direct comparisons to the pundits and social critics of the Op-Ed page. The virtual absence of regular commentary on network TV is a relatively new development, dating from Sevareid's retirement from CBS and Howard K. Smith's resignation from ABC last year. Network producers are so hard-pressed to tell all the news they have in 22 minutes or so that they understandably view a three-minute sermonette, no matter how intelligent and concise, as expendable. A pity. The network radio commentaries of such TV news stars as Chancellor and Cronkite are ample proof that print journalists do not have a monopoly on brains or wit. Argues Bill Moyers: "It isn't enough to have a procession of facts driven across your attention span. You need a human mind that asks, 'What does this mean?' "

The differences between TV and print are also reflected in the way their respective journalists gather the news. A print reporter works the nooks and crannies of a story, searching for detail and nuance that lead to comprehensiveness. Since he is unobtrusive, carrying little more than a pencil and a notebook, he can pick up the natural flow and feel of an event. When his report appears on paper, it becomes a tangible memory to be examined at will. By contrast, a television crew arrives on the scene like a detachment of troops. The correspondent works on his stage before a gawking public, the cameras whirring and the lights blazing. He sketches the skeleton of a story but the viewers must often find its flesh elsewhere.

Discovering and training topflight TV correspondents is difficult. Says Sevareid: "The practical problem is getting people who have some compelling quality of personality on-camera, but who can also think, report and write. Television news is still partly show business." Unfortunately, the sudden glamour of local TV news has undermined the traditional apprentice system. More and more would-be anchormen go directly from college into broadcasting. Dan Rather would like to see the old route up restored: "We should never hire anyone without at least two years of print experience."

For his part, Rather promises to lobby for at least 15 minutes more of news every night, as well as a weekly half-an-hour or hour special report. He also wants sharper writing, snappier graphics and a more varied rhythm for the CBS Evening News. "As an anchor, I will not be chained to a desk," says Rather, who tends to lofty declamation. "My vision is to be on the cutting edge of stories a great deal of time." In a spirit somewhat at odds with the conservative traditions of the Cronkite broadcast, Rather promises that he will demand innovation. Says he: "I want to slam things to the edge."

The 1980s will surely be a time of explosive growth for television news, and not just because of the public's increasing appetite for information. Explains Westin: "With the advent of cable, discs and cassettes, people will be able to play on their screens what they want when they want. Sports and news will remain among the few things that have to be aired when they happen. Clearly, those are our targets for the future." All of this will lead to bigger profits for news divisions, and if Rather is right, better journalism as well. Says he: "We will have more people, better equipment, more overseas bureaus and better broadcasts."

Whether the current explosion of TV news turns into Rather's brave new world of broadcast journalism is as uncertain as the outcome of next week's Nielsens. Indeed, there is no guarantee even that Rather will be around to enjoy it. It took Walter Cronkite years to forge his almost mystical bond of trust with the viewing public. In the present competitive climate, Rather may not have the luxury of that much time. "If commitment and hard work will do it," says Rather with characteristic self-possession, "then I'll be a success." But in the TV news business, as in news itself, stories do not always have a happy ending. Rather's attempt to replace Cronkite will be worth watching in itself. It could be the sort of spectacle in which reality makes better TV than fiction. And that's the way it is.

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