Now Here's the News...

It is 10 a.m. on Thursday, Feb. 14, and 33 people are crowding into the scruffy conference room at ABC's Manhattan news center on West 66th Street. Some stand, some sit on boxes of supplies--ABC does not waste money on frills--while eleven others sit around a long conference table studded with microphones. The microphones connect this office with bureaus in Washington, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, Dallas and Los Angeles, where other people are waiting.

Assistants read the day's assignments and other possible stories: there may be a breakthrough in the Iranian stalemate, there is trouble in Turkey and Lebanon, and Richard Nixon is arriving in Manhattan. Most of the stories have already been scheduled or discussed, and the reading goes swiftly, with only an occasional comment from Senior Producer Richard Kaplan or from his boss, Executive Producer Jeff Gralnick, who is calling in from Washington today. "We want to get into Turkey and Beirut," says Gralnick, "and we want to do it soon." Kaplan replies: "We'll get on to it, Jeff." At 10:20 the meeting disbands.

In ABC's eight domestic and eleven foreign bureaus, correspondents and camera crews go off on their assignments. On any one day there are approximately 20 three-to-six-person crews at work around the world. ABC News employs more than 800 people; CBS and NBC are still slightly larger, with about 1,000 employees each.

In New York, Kaplan and Senior Producer Walter Porges take seats around a horseshoe-shaped command post that they call the bridge. Phones are everywhere, and there are two TV screens connected to computers. Without even having to whirl to one side, they can find out the latest on stories or watch footage coming in from the "birds"--otherwise known as satellites. The atmosphere is decidely informal.

At about 3 p.m. the satellite feeds begin to come in from overseas. Most of them are routed through London, where Peter Jennings, one of the show's three anchormen, is always stationed to read foreign news. London is five hours ahead of New York, and Jennings has already taped his segments, which are fed, along with everything else, into a warren of machines in the basement of 7 West 66th. There sound is meshed with video. The recent purchase of new equipment has greatly speeded up the complicated mixing process. Nonetheless, there is a frantic rush each afternoon; everything must be ready by 6. The other networks offer their affiliates a choice of only a 6:30 or 7 p.m. broadcast, but since the days when it had to try harder, ABC has always given its stations three choices.

As taped reports come in, each correspondent's words are transcribed and sent to the bridge, where Kaplan and Porges look at them. If they feel something is missing or needs to be changed, they ask the correspondent to do the report over again. In today's lead story about the hostages, for instance, U.N. Correspondent Lou Cioffi has begun his report with an interview with Irish Statesman Sean McBride, who has been acting as a mediator. Kaplan thinks that McBride should go at the end of the piece, and the change is made.

The only domestic reporter who is not edited beforehand is White House Correspondent Sam Donaldson, or "Sudden Sam," as he is sometimes called because his taped reports come in so close to deadline. Today, for instance, Donaldson is so busy tracking down news of a possible hostage settlement with Iran that he does not finish taping his stand-up report from the White House lawn until two minutes before air time. Still, Donaldson has discussed his reports and has gone through a kind of verbal editing earlier in the day.

At five minutes to 6, the captains on the bridge pick up their papers and rush down to the control room in the basement, where seven or eight technicians are already in place. There, facing a wall of TV screens, they orchestrate the broadcast. Porges makes sure that each segment adheres to its time schedule. Because of commercials there are only 22 minutes for news in the half-hour broadcast, not a second more. If something runs long or short, the two domestic anchormen--Tom Jarriel in Chicago and Frank Reynolds in Washington--have been given compensating sentences they can drop or add. Kaplan gives them directions through their earphones.

The 6 o'clock broadcast is like an out-of-town tryout, and changes are always made for the next show at 6:30. Tonight Kaplan does not like a head shot of John Connally. "He looks like hell," he says, and a young woman runs to find one that is more flattering. He is also unhappy with a Washington report by Tim O'Brien about an FBI crackdown on pornography. Says he: "O'Brien needs another eight seconds." As a result of the change, a bit about flooding in Los Angeles is discarded.

Speaking directly to Jarriel, who has been recapping the day's events at the Winter Olympics, Kaplan tells him that he has, through an error in the copy, reduced the 1,500-meter women's speed-skating race to 15 meters; he is told to add another 1,485 meters at 6:30. Later, Kaplan tells Jarriel how he himself knew the difference. "I got a call from a redheaded fellow who cares about these things." Translation: News Head Roone Arledge had been watching in Lake Placid.

The 6:30 show is taped in its entirety, and if nothing goes wrong, the tape is simply replayed at 7. Tonight's broadcast was good, but Max Robinson, who is subbing for Reynolds in Washington tonight, says that he misread his opening. Though nobody else had noticed, he forgot to say the word "near," as in "the framework of a plan to free the hostages is in place or near at hand." The mistake is not very important, but Robinson nonetheless goes live for the first few seconds of the third show to rectify the error.

At 7:30 everyone scatters; still that is not the end of Thursday's nightly news. At 10:15 the chief producers hold a conference call from their homes to review the show just finished and plan the one to follow. Tonight, for example, there are some harsh words about the O'Brien piece on pornography--"It didn't tell much about what happened," Kaplan says--and there are questions about why there was no report on a $700 million settlement that American Oil Co. made with the Government to satisfy price-gouging charges. The answer, that it was too complicated to explain in a brief time slot, satisfies no one. Yet Kaplan is happy with what he and his colleagues have done. "I'm pretty pleased," he says. And 17.6 million people who watched with him probably agreed.

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