Weighing Network Anchors

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

The three major nightly news shows gird for a fall battle

The professional life of a network TV news anchor is too hectic to be called solitary, too lucrative to qualify as nasty or brutish, but often short: Walter Cronkite of CBS has been the only first-stringer at any network to hold the job to retirement age. Last week the industry shook its kaleidoscope once again. What seemed to be emerging, by week's end, was a pattern that American viewers have hardly ever seen: head-to-head, half-hour competition among solo anchors at all three commercial networks.

The current champion, CBS's intense, adrenal Dan Rather, 51, will be matched, starting on Labor Day, against NBC's boyish Tom Brokaw, 43, who at present is a coanchor. At ABC, which has had a three-cornered format, executives are expected to announce this week that elegant, Canada-born Peter Jennings, 45, will be the central figure of a revamped one-anchor show. Contends Van Gordon Sauter, president of CBS News: "A one-anchor format provides continuity, more time for stories and less fragmentation of viewers' attention."

The shift in pattern was prompted by the death two weeks ago of ABC'S Washington-based anchor, Frank Reynolds. After he went on sick leave in April, ABC'S nightly news ratings dropped from second place to third, but the advantage went mostly to CBS. Those results convinced top officials at NBC that the pairing of the puckish Brokaw and dour Roger Mudd, 55, had little chance of catching on. A peripatetic workaholic, Brokaw has made mild fun of Mudd's reluctance to leave Washington in pursuit of story or spectacle. Though Brokaw continues to regard Mudd as a friend, he was described by NBC sources as having lobbied for the change. Says Brokaw: "Both of us felt that at times the two-anchor format was an unnatural division of labor."

The day after Reynolds died, NBC News President Reuven Frank demoted Mudd in a confrontation that Frank described as "painful but not acrimonious." Mudd was lured from CBS in 1980, after losing to Rather in the competition to succeed Cronkite, with the promise that he would become NBC'S sole anchor if John Chancellor stepped down. Later Mudd agreed to share the job to help NBC keep Brokaw. For his pains, Mudd was reassigned to what he does as well as nearly anyone else in television, political reporting. He announced his ouster to newsroom colleagues last Tuesday. Nothing was said on the show that night about the shift, because Frank anticipated "an awkward moment, whether Mudd or Brokaw reported it." Afterward, however, Mudd allowed that he had longed to close the show with the ironic salutation, "Good night from all of them at NBC News."

CBS News executives, who have been beleaguered by budget cuts, controversy over a shift toward featurish news, and some highly publicized libel suits, were suddenly buoyant. They predicted that viewers would opt for the "stability" of Rather's broadcast. CBS is a little worried, however, about competition from PBS's MacNeil/Lehrer Report, which will expand to an hour on Sept. 5 and will run opposite network news in many cities. Said a CBS official: "Right now, we have the pointy-headed intellectuals and Volvo drivers. But if MacNeil/Lehrer starts doing better, more graphic television, it may win some of those viewers."

At ABC News, where President Roone Arledge has ardently wooed big names, staffers raised objections to Mudd as a potential anchor: he is a two-time castoff; hiring him would bypass ABC veterans; as a coworker, he is distant and demanding. Said ABC News Vice President Richard Wald: "We would rather have someone from inside." Among ABC correspondents, Jennings is the obvious choice. He was ABC'S anchor for three years, beginning in 1965, when he was only 27, and has been persuasive if cerebral as a London-based coanchor; since he shifted to Washington July 4 as a substitute for Reynolds, ABC ratings have rebounded. Ted Koppel is both happy and, in ABC'S view, all but indispensable at the late-hour interview show Nightline. White House Correspondent Sam Donaldson is combative and abrasive. The other anchor in the current format, Chicago-based Max Robinson, never caught on with ABC executives and has been told he will be reassigned. The fact that Robinson is black creates diplomatic problems for ABC. But it seems not to be an issue for audiences: in a fact-filled book about anchors and their contract negotiations, The Evening Stars, Author Barbara Matusow reports that ABC research showed that Robinson's race made little difference to viewers.

Installation of a single anchor at each network would be almost a first for the era since the three newscasts expanded to half an hour in the 1960s. The only other instance was during an eleven-month period in 1975 and 1976, when Cronkite competed with Chancellor at NBC and Harry Reasoner at ABC. The change would be most dramatic for ABC, which invented the multianchor "whiparound" because it lacked a single, forceful personality. Almost accidentally, ABC created a version of Marshall McLuhan's "global village," with newscasters focusing on diverse stories as they viewed the world from different places. Arledge's decentralized vision was taken up, in part, by CBS News under Sauter, who downplayed Washington and Government in favor of more geographically varied news. In Mudd's view, his ouster by NBC also reflects "an anti-Washington bias." But NBC News President Frank insists he moved Mudd mainly because the show "looked like two decks of cards being riffled together." Sums up Frank: "The two-anchor program was not coherent."

--By William A. Henry III.

Reported by Richard Bruns/New York and Christopher Ogden/Chicago

With reporting by Richard Bruns, Christopher Ogden This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.