How Much Better Twice As Long?

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

After eight successful years, MacNeil-Lehrer goes to an hour

Almost from the moment that CBS aired the first half-hour national newscast in 1963, the three commercial networks have yearned to expand their evening news shows to an hour. But affiliate stations repeatedly refused to yield lucrative air time, and the hour daily network newscast remains a daydream. That standoff has given the noncommercial Public Broadcasting Service a chance to top its giant rivals: last week Anchors Robert MacNeil and James Lehrer doubled up their MacNeil-Lehrer Report, a nightly half hour on some single topic that was the most widely viewed program on PBS, into a multi-issue roundup, The MacNeil/Lehrer Lehrer NewsHour. Though envious, the commercial networks applauded. Said NBC News President Reuven Frank: "We hope the hour is so successful that we are forced to emulate it."

From its inception in 1975, the MacNeil-Lehrer Report was seen by ABC, NBC and CBS as a noncompetitive follow-up to their newscasts. Indeed, some ads for the PBS show even urged viewers to watch a network newscast first. But now, in cities including New York, Washington, Miami and New Orleans, the NewsHour airs at the same time as the network shows and seeks to steal some viewers away. Says MacNeil: "We got tired of being only a supplement to the networks, and wanted to become an alternative."

The dual-anchor NewsHour premiered the same Labor Day evening that the networks offered solo-anchor shows for the first time since 1976. That singular difference in format, however, seems less striking than two other qualities: the leisurely, almost ruminative pace of the NewsHour, vs. the breakneck momentum of the commercial networks; and the prominence given to live interviews, vs. the commercial networks' almost exclusive reliance on rigorously edited scripts and footage. For all that, the content of the four newscasts last week was similar. All stressed the aftermath of the Soviet downing of a Korean Air Lines passenger jet, as well as events in Lebanon and Central America. All ran holiday-themed stories about the politically troubled American labor union movement. There were notable differences, of course: the networks played up stories for which they had vivid pictures--the police crackdown against antigovernment demonstrators in Chile, an air raid in Managua by opponents of the Nicaraguan junta. Without comparable footage, the News-Hour dealt with these events in a few sentences. Says Lehrer: "The networks will spend $25,000 to rush home a videotape of a building burning in Beirut. We are more interested in perspective."

The enlarged (from 35 to 70) NewsHour staff, based in New York City, Washington and Denver, produces documentary reports almost nightly, and can call on freelancers and such sources of footage as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the British Visnews syndicate. But the show's producers still rely heavily on studio interviews, which TV executives term "talking heads." For some stories that approach is fitting. Says NewsHour's Denver-based producer Ken Davis, a transplant from CBS: "The Korean jet story is perfect for us: the networks cannot get cameras in, and what is needed is analysis."

True enough, but American viewers are accustomed to being transported to the scene of the news. The effect of studio interviews is sometimes akin to a televised radio show. Moreover, there are pitfalls in live TV, especially as practiced by the unintrusive interviewers on NewsHour: under the permissive guidance of Washington Correspondent Judy Woodruff (who was lured from NBC), a discussion of President Reagan's proposed legislation to correct sex discrimination turned into an unrestrained attack by two feminist critics.

As with the first editions of almost anything, the opening installments of NewsHour were ragged. Admitted Executive Producer Lester Crystal, a former president of NBC News, "There is a great deal of smoothing out to be done." Among the snags: "mini-documentaries" on organ transplants and on the decline of a Kansas City stockyard seemed more like unedited slices of life than stories with news pegs, and "video postcards" of nature scenes and Americana reinforced the show's occasional aura of untimeliness.

What NewsHour lacks in slickness it hopes to make up in spontaneity. It is too soon to tell whether that will satisfy viewers. In overnight ratings from several cities last week, the show held its customary 4% share of the total audience. In New York, where the first half of NewsHour was outmatched by the network news casts, second-half ratings rose substantially. The show has funds to last a year, with $13 million of the $22 million budget coming from A T & T grants. Says Senior Producer Phil Garvin: "We do not know if the hour show will even exist next year." ABC's Nightline, which initially borrowed the MacNeil-Lehrer Report's single-topic approach, emphasis on interviews and simple visual style, this April outpaced MacNeil and Lehrer in expanding to a multitopic hour; its ratings have dropped as much as 30%, and its focus has blurred.

The fundamental question that NewsHour must answer, for PBS stations that resisted the expansion and for audiences who liked it as it was, is why the producers gambled with a proven success. MacNeil admits to having felt personally "confined" by the old format. Says he: "The half hour had a clear role, but it was always intended as just a foot in the door." Now that the door is open the show must trace a clear path.

--By William A. Henry III.

Reported by Richard Bruns/New York, with other bureaus

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