The Death of Network News

When it comes to the current state of network news in this country, the words of Crosby, Stills and Nash may say it best: "It's been a long time coming Gonna be a long time gone." With more Americans currently watching cable TV than the broadcast networks, the audiences for network news would have declined even if the news divisions were cutting edge. But cutting edge isn't even close when discussing what ABC. CBS and NBC put on their nightly news casts. Switch on the television in the early evening and you will see the same stories done the same way on all three networks, Ponderous and slow, the broadcasts are like dinosaurs seeking to survive severe climatic changes. Will the evening newscasts become extinct? Maybe. Are they already irrelevant? Many viewers, especially those under the age of 55, think so.

Here are the stats, and they're not pretty. Since 1982, viewership for the three nightly newscasts has fallen almost 40 percent, and the demographics have totally collapsed. According to the Nielsen ratings, the average age for Americans watching Dan Rather is 60. For those tuning in Peter Jennings, it's 58. Tom Brokaw attracts the youngest crowd--the average age of viewers watching him is 57. The golden girls love these guys--however, almost everybody else has bailed. Why? The answer is that network news is timid and predictable. There's simply no juice.

The interesting part is that, in my opinion, the journalists working at the three networks are the best in the world. You don't survive at that level unless you know what you're doing. When it comes to covering news, nobody does it better than network news correspondents and producers--and that includes newspaper reporters.

But the corporate culture at the networks is fierce. Almost everybody I know who works for the big three works scared. There is ferocious infighting for assignments and airtime. The network news runs 22 minutes each night. There are dozens of correspondents. do the math.

And then there are the figurative assassinations. If Dan Rather gets run over by a bus tomorrow, who steps in? Ray Romano? Where are the heirs apparent at CBS? Rather is north of 70 years old. There is nobody behind him.

That, of course, is no accident. I worked for CBS in the early Eighties when Rather had just taken over from Walter Cronkite. I swaggered into CBS as a hotshot reporter front WCBS. the New York flagship station. Six months later they carried me out in a body bag.

CBS News as well as ABC News and NBC (concluded on page 193)Network News(continued from page 102) News are places where you keep your mouth shut and do what you are told. Since that is impossible for me, I washed out quickly. But I watched other fine reporters die slow deaths over the years. Few employees have power at the networks and a drive-by vendetta can cut a correspondent down at any time, especially one with anchor potential.

Miraculously, ABC News' Roone Arledge hired me five years after CBS cremated me. Arledge was a creative guy, and Peter Jennings actually liked my style. I did well at ABC News but the harness was too tight. I took an anchor job at Inside Edition three years later and haven't looked back since.

Here's what I learned from my time at network news: First, the news divisions are loath to tee off the powerful because they want access. They want to be able to get that presidential interview once a year. Therefore, none of the networks did much investigative reporting during the Clinton years, when all kinds of things were going on. When was the last time you saw a network news program break a big story? They will never admit it, but the networks leave the exposés to the print journalists. Cronkite simply read The Washington Post about the Watergate goings-on. Rather, Jennings and Brokaw followed the Clinton scandals through The New York Times and correspondent Jeff Gerth.

Second, the people who really run network news are moneymen. Profit guys. News is a major pain in the butt to most of them because news is expensive and the elderly audience means lower advertising rates. Also, controversy is almost forbidden on the nightly news. That's why you don't see commentary. The philosophy is don't rock the corporate boat, don't get anybody mad at you.

Here's an eyewitness report. In 1981 I brought a story to Howard Stringer, who was then the producer of the CBS Evening News With Dan Rather. I told Stringer that there was a battle going on in Provincetown, Massachusetts between the gay weekend adventurers and the conservative townsfolk. Stringer, now the top man at Sony in the U.S., told me to go do the story.

Using a hidden camera, my crew recorded all kinds of public sex in the streets of Provincetown. The mayor was outraged and told us so in no uncertain terms. The gays replied that a few exhibitionists shouldn't spoil the party for everyone else. This was before the AIDS plague. With the footage and interviews we got, it was a hell of a story.

It never ran.

When Rather and the boys screened the report there was total silence. We had blacked out any explicit stuff but this was a tough piece. I thought I'd be a hero. Instead, I got blank stares.

To his credit, Stringer finally told me it was a good piece of journalism but it wasn't right for the Rather newscast. He never said why but it was obvious. That story was way too in-your-face--pardon the pun. People would be offended, the gay lobby might complain.

Over the years the timidity of the network news operations hasn't changed much, but television news has. Now you have the 24-hour cable operations that are bold, daring and, at times, light-years ahead of the networks in reporting stories that engage Americans.

My show broke the September 11 charity story that revealed billions of donated dollars were being held up by bureaucratic bungling at the Red Cross and the United Way. The networks wouldn't touch it.

Fox News Channel also got hold of tax returns for one of Jesse Jackson's organizations that showed millions in expenses that were not properly itemized. No network reporter would go near the story. Our competitors at CNN were the first to get home-video footage of the World Trade Center attack, which was then shown on all networks. I could give you scores of other examples, but I think you get the picture.

CBS News correspondent Edward R. Murrow went on a crusade to expose corruption and challenge Americans by using TV news as a cannon, firing disturbing images at viewers with the hope that society would turn on the bad guys.

Murrow's name is still invoked in network circles, but I know this: If old Ed is reincarnated and returns to his former profession, the networks will pass on him. He'll be working cable news.

Viewership for nightly news has fallen almost 40 percent.