Anchors Aweigh

Goodnight, Barbara & Harry

The job of network anchorman as we know it today was invented one night in 1965 when CBS' Walter Cronkite conducted television's first regular half-hour newscast as if he had been born at his desk, all-wise and all-seeing. The anchor concept has held firmly, and for network and local newscasts everywhere, that's the way it is.

Or was. Roone Arledge, the ABC sports chief who took charge of the network's sagging news operation a year ago, announced that sometime this summer he will replace Harry Reasoner and Barbara Walters, the New York City-based anchors of the ABC Evening News, with lesser known journalists scattered around the world. If anyone remains in charge, it will be veteran Correspondent Frank Reynolds, who will introduce and frequently report stories from his post in Washington. Peter Jennings will sort out foreign stories from London. Max Robinson, until now a local TV newsman in Washington, will handle news from Chicago, and a fourth news desk will be set up later in Los Angeles. Barbara Walters will stay on in New York to do interviews and special reports, and Harry Reasoner will be locked in a closet.

That is in effect, if not in fact, what Arledge will be doing to Reasoner by removing him from the Evening News and giving him no other on-air assignment, though Reasoner's $500,000-a-year contract does not expire until 1980. Reasoner wants to return to CBS, where he has been offered a job as head of its documentary unit. Whether or not Arledge will release Reasoner from his contract remains uncertain. Arledge says only that he is not happy with Reasoner's present role, and anyway wants to put less emphasis on personalities and more on journalism. Says Arledge: "To be frank, other networks have made stronger commitments to news."

At the two other networks, where no similar plans to weigh anchor have been announced, the ABC experiment will no doubt be watched closely. "It's a healthy thing for the three networks to take different approaches," says Joseph Angotti, executive producer of the NBC Nightly News. "For too long we've looked the same."

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