Battle for the Morning

By Gerald Clarke

Today, Good Morning America and Morning fight to be first

Plug in the percolator, scramble the eggs and pour the milk over the granola. These paragraphs must be read in the proper atmosphere, with all the sights, sounds and smells of an American breakfast: toasters popping, bacon sizzling, people bustling to get to work or school on time.

For this is the story of an institution as revered as breakfast, as certain as the sunrise. Since 1952, when the Today show first burbled at an unsuspecting world, millions of Americans have depended on early-morning television for news, weather, helpful household hints--and perhaps an excuse to avoid talking to spouses or children at that delicate hour.

In the past several months the early shows have scooped their evening news cousins on several occasions. Billy Carter chose to talk first about his Libyan connections at that hour, and Gerald Ford electrified last July's Republican Convention with the announcement that, yes, he might be interested in becoming Vice President again. Many people in Washington consider it a duty to turn on the TV before they turn off the electric blanket, just so they will not miss a similar thunderbolt. Some day, indeed, anthropologists doubtless will wonder how people ever woke up in 1951--and in all the millenniums before that.

Now something new is going on in those sleepy hours from 7 to 9: the Battle of the Morning, TV's fiercest competition of the day or night. The battle pits three of television's most engaging personalities against one another:

David Hartman, ABC'S Mr. Aw Shucks, an ex-TV actor (Lucas Tanner) with the gentle smile and careworn countenance of a kindly uncle.

Tom Brokaw, NBC's Mr. Clean, an experienced journalist with the snub nose and boyish good looks of the class president, the boy most likely to succeed.

Charles Kuralt, CBS'S middle-aged Huckleberry Finn, a rumpled newcomer to this three-way race, having added the week day Morning to his imaginative, much acclaimed Sunday show only in October.

Up and down the battle goes. After five years of trying, ABC's Good Morning America finally broke the 27-year domination of NBC's Today show early this year. For 33 weeks straight, from Jan. 14 through Aug. 29, ABC was either tops or even with NBC in the Nielsen ratings. Then NBC gradually inched ahead, helped by Shogun and the World Series: viewers tend to leave the dial where it was when they went to bed the night before. During the past two months the lead has bounced back and forth. The most recent count gives ABC a 5.9 rating, NBC 5.1. Since each ratings point is equivalent to 778,000 households, that translates into 4,590,000 sets tuned to Good Morning America, 3,968,000 to Today.

CBS's Morning is a distant third. But the arrival of Kuralt, that laureate of the common man, has acted like a shot of vitamin B12. Within two weeks after he became anchorman on Oct. 27, Morning's ratings jumped from 2.5 to 3.5, an increase of 40%. Robert Northshield, the show's senior executive producer, is convinced that the amiable Kuralt, 46, who won millions of fans over the past 13 years for his evening news "On the Road" travels, will push them still higher. He says, "If anyone can raise the ratings, Charlie can. He's an extraordinary intellect, a humanist of tremendous dedication, and he has more integrity and compassion than anyone else I know. Put together, that spells mother." (Or whew!)

But even an extraordinary intellect, dedicated humanist and man of compassion like Mother Charlie cannot erase Morning's greatest handicap: it is only half a competitor. The show runs opposite its two rivals from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. After that it gives way--extremely reluctantly, it should be added--to Captain Kangaroo, which has been entertaining preschool children for a quarter-century. Quips Kuralt: "If only we could resolve the serious artistic question of what to do with Captain Kangaroo."

But, curiously, none of the networks is actually losing, except in pride. The war that began when ABC launched Good Morning America five years ago has increased ratings for all three networks. ABC'S early-morning Nielsens have nearly quadrupled, and last year alone its audience increased almost 29%. The advance has not come at the expense of either NBC or CBS, however. NBC has gained slightly, and CBS with Kuralt has gained greatly, though it is too early to say if it will keep all its new viewers.

What has happened is that all the energy crackling over the air waves at such an early hour has awakened new viewers to the fact that intelligent life exists before Walter Cronkite. The total morning-show audience has grown from about 7 million households to more than 10 million in five years. Until recently, watching morning television was for many people like drinking before noon: if you did it, you certainly did not brag about it. Now many more people seem to be sneaking a glance--ABC estimates the average viewer watches 2.0 minutes--at one of the network shows to find out what happened during the night, learn how to guard against heart attacks and prevent wrinkles, hear the latest gossip from Hollywood and receive instructions on how to manage a household in the perilous '80s.

On the assumption that more men watch in the first hour than in the second, each of the shows concentrates on hard news early on. Today's Washington correspondent, Richard Valeriani, usually interviews a politician in that hour, for example; Good Morning's Jack Anderson rakes the muck at 7:10; and Morning's business correspondent, Ray Brady, discusses the impact of high interest rates on the housing industry at 7:45. By 8, the workingmen and -women have presumably left--along with Morning--and NBC and ABC turn their attention to housewives.

On Today during the second hour, Dr. Art Ulene may demonstrate the Heimlich maneuver, which is intended to save a choking victim. Critic Gene Shalit may interview Actor Alec McCowen. Jane Pauley, Brokaw's sidekick, may talk to Actresses Valerie Harper and Esther Rolle.

Meanwhile, on Good Morning, the show's own medical expert, Dr. Tim Johnson, may be talking about herpes. Author Erma Bombeck may be trying to elicit a few laughs with her stories of life in untamed suburbia. One of Good Morning 's greatest assets in the second hour is Mary Ellen Pinkham, who has probably contributed even more to domestic felicity than Sara Lee. It was Pinkham who disclosed to the country that Saran Wrap is easier to control if it is put into the freezer (it does not cling to itself when cold) and that cottage cheese lasts longer if the container is kept upside down in the refrigerator (because the container then becomes airtight). Nobel Prizes have been awarded for less than that.

Despite their similarities, however, each of the shows has a distinct personality. Today is like a morning newspaper, solid, informative but sometimes pompous and solemn. The set, so old now that it is encrusted with dust, is dominated by an official-looking horseshoe-shaped desk, behind which are chairs for the staff and a giant backdrop of the Manhattan skyline. Brokaw, 40, has something of the manner of a friendly corporate lawyer. The prim and manicured Pauley, 30, could easily be his law school trainee, so efficient does she seem. Fortunately, what they lack in sparkle is made up for by Today's new weatherman, Willard Scott, 46, a good old Virginia boy who has a more engaging grin than anyone else has had since Arthur Godfrey left TV 21 years ago.

Good Morning America, on the other hand, is like an afternoon tabloid, more frivolous but also less pretentious. The basic set is a mock suburban home, with a cozy living room and a working kitchen (for Pinkham and Child). If Brokaw is as brisk as a barrister, the easygoing Hartman, 45, is as relaxed as the family doctor, someone whom you would not mind telling about all those aches and pains. He also has a female subaltern, Joan Lunden, 30, a wholesome-looking type who is given little scope on the show, perhaps wisely. Her style of interviewing is to elicit the least information possible with the widest possible eyes.

Morning, which has now been retitled Morning with Charles Kuralt, is the classiest of the three, bearing more resemblance to a magazine than a newspaper. The set, yellow and white, is on separate platforms, and Kuralt sits on an artist's stool, with an easel containing his notes off to the side. Like Hartman, he has a relaxed, down-home manner; but he also comes across as someone who actually enjoys thinking, the barefoot boy with a paperback copy of Homer sticking out of his back pocket.

Both Morning and Today are part of their networks' news divisions, a connection their staffs note with some pride; Good Morning America is a production of ABC's entertainment division, which seems to give that show's staff something of an inferiority complex. To the viewer, the distinction, particularly between Today and Good Morning, may be unimportant. All three programs offer news, and even Morning, which considers itself all news, can be entertaining. All three also have generous budgets: $20 million a year for Good Morning, $16 million for Today and in the vicinity of $7.5 million for Morning. In fact, the real costs are undoubtedly higher, since all three use stories and correspondents paid for by evening news shows.

The format of the morning show is almost as old as television itself. Like many another of the medium's innovations, it was laid out by NBC's Wunderkind president Sylvester ("Pat") Weaver in the early '50s. "We want America to shave, to eat, to dress, to get to work on time," he wrote in a memo outlining what he had in mind. "But we also want America to be well informed, to be amused, to be lightened in spirit and in heart, and to be reinforced in inner resolution through knowledge."

Tentatively titled Rise and Shine, the show was meant to be a potpourri of news, weather, entertainment, helpful hints and the time. In a burst of enthusiasm Weaver later added: "Seven to 9 a.m. will be the Sun Valley, Palm Springs and Miami Beach of TV." With Weaver's memos fluttering like banners before it, the show, renamed the Today show, went on the air Jan. 14, 1952.

It landed with a thump. Critics were hostile, advertisers were wary, and audiences were slow to build. Though Host Dave Garroway gave viewers exactly what Weaver wanted them to have, NBC was ready to kill the show after the first year. Salvation came in the furry form of J. Fred Muggs, a baby chimpanzee. His owners, two former NBC pages, brought him to visit the set, and a producer decided to put him before the cameras. As Darwin discovered long ago, man's primitive cousins are endlessly fascinating, and soon just about everyone in the country--or so it seemed --was watching the antics of the mischievous anthropoid. Unfortunately, fame went to Muggs' head, and he began biting the hands that fed him--and any other piece of exposed anatomy. Four-and-a-half years after he leaped onto the set, he retired to "extend his personal horizons," as NBC'S public relations mill delicately phrased it.

During Garroway's nine-year tenure, Today was relaxed and inviting. But some time during the '60s it began to take itself seriously, and boredom settled over Weaver's sunny video resort like a thick fog.

"The show was an effete, elitist program that went on at great length," says former Producer Paul Friedman (no relation to current Producer Steve Friedman). "When I arrived in May 1976, the news ran from 7 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. After the weather there would be a 20-minute debate between the lovers of seals and the users of seals. From 8 to 8:15 an interview with the author of India from 1822 to 1925. At 8:30, after more news and weather, there would be a 20-minute interview with Yehudi Menuhin." Says TomBrokaw: "Sometimes Today was just plodding."

Enter Good Morning America. ABC, which had suddenly determined to become a big-league network in the mid-'70s, wanted the prestige of a morning show and assigned producer Bob Shanks to come up with a formula. Shanks' solution: copy the original Today of the '50s. When Good Morning began in 1975, it was more like Today, as Weaver had envisioned it, than Today. There was news, of course, but not much. Catering to its largely female audience (66%, vs. 55% for Today and 47% for Morning), the show set out to provide women with advice and information they need to run a household--a kind of Family Circle of the air. Helen Gurley Brown addressed the problems of working women; Rona Barrett dished up as much of the Hollywood dirt as ABC'S lawyers would let her get away with; and mixing hysteria with sensationalism in equal measure, Geraldo Rivera provided a kind of television version of the National Enquirer. Holding it all together was amiable David Hartman. Says ABC Vice President Squire Rushnell: "David Hartman is the most important single factor in the success of Good Morning America."

Hartman is probably the most effective host of a morning show since Garroway. A New Englander--he was raised in Pawtucket, R.I.--he is married to a former TV producer and has three children. Although at 6 ft. 5 hi., he is five inches taller than Robert Young, he brings to Good Morning the same concerned but reassuring bedside manner of Marcus Welby, M.D. "We were looking for someone who could elicit information, but who is easy to take in the morning," says Good Morning's executive producer, George Merlis. "That's not a time for human sandpaper."

Hartman's goal, and the ami of the entire show, is to ease viewers into the day. Bad news is provided almost apologetically, and there is enough good news, or at least entertaining features, to make the world seem less gloomy than it otherwise would. "Good Morning is more comfortable, more loose, more open than Today," says Shirley

MacLaine, an old talk-show hand. "David sits back and lets you be the star. You are not competing, and therefore you feel comfortable and you talk more."

Sometimes, however, it seems that what Good Morning has done away with is not sandpaper but grit, and guests know that they will rarely be asked an embarrassing question. Talking to Ingrid Bergman about her new book, for instance, Hartman ever so delicately moved in to pop the big one: Is she cured of cancer? "Readers want to know how you are now," he said. "Thank you," she replied. "I feel very well indeed."

In keeping with its homey set, Good Morning tries to create the illusion that everybody who works on the show is part of a family. "It's our home," says Lunden. There is some truth to that, but the home has not always been happy. Former staffers tell stories of intense backbiting. "I've never met so many people hi one place who had so little integrity," recalls one of them. "They had a dart board with a picture on it of Rona Barrett, and they would throw darts at it and make insulting remarks about her. Then when she called, they'd be all sweetness and light." The columnist, a breathless, electronic update of Louella Parsons, Hollywood's gossip queen of the '40s, left the show last September for Today, where she will start in January. Rushnell, who took over hi May 1978, brags that he cleared out nearly a third of the show's employees, the malcontents, as he calls them. "Now," he says, sounding like ABC'S commissar in charge, "the staff is 100% committed to support David Hartman and the rest of the family."

In that order. Hartman's ego is reported to be enormous. No one is allowed to stand in his light. Sandy Hill, Lunden's energetic predecessor, was much admired by the Good Morning staff but got along with Hartman so poorly that she hardly talked to him on camera, finally leaving to become the show's roving correspondent. Lunden, by contrast, is no threat to anybody. "The reason that she's risen is that she's a pretty girl with an empty head who doesn't bother anybody," is the bitter comment of one of the 30% Rushnell removed. "If you told her to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, she'd ask what time she should be there and when the limousine would pick her up afterward."

Still, perhaps Hartman may be forgiven his high opinion of himself--and his reported $680,-000-a-year salary. He made the show a success, and he still works 14 or 15 hours a day, preparing for interviews and deciding who and what will be on the show. Though he has no experience in journalism, Hartman, who earned a degree in economics from Duke, has a characteristic required of any good journalist: curiosity. "His appeal is that he seems genuinely interested in the world," says his new competitor, Kuralt. "He is quite good at what he does."

However big his ego, moreover, Hartman does not let guests or viewers see it. "I'm no star, but David went out of his way to be friendly to me," says Dr. Robert Dupont, ex-director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. "On the other hand, I did four hours of filming with Dick Cavett, and at the end of it he didn't even remember my name."

If Good Morning imitated the original Today show, Today is now imitating Good Morning imitating Today. The changes began in 1976 under Paul Friedman: interviews were cut down and sharpened. Phil Donahue, whose syndicated talk show is seen by 8.5 million viewers daily, was hired for a shorter four-times-a-week Today segment. Says one NBC insider: "The thrust was 'Let's figure out what makes Good Morning successful and duplicate it.' "

Since Hartman was the key to that success, the network even tried to clone him. NBC executives quietly approached another actor, Alan Alda of MASH, to see if he would like to replace Brokaw. Alda was flattered but said no.

Silverman did urge the hiring of Actress Mariette Hartley, best known for her sassy role opposite James Garner in the Polaroid commercials. She was brought in last summer to substitute for Pauley, who was getting married to Cartoonist Garry Trudeau (Doonesbury). Though no one said as much, it seemed clear that if Hartley had done well, the job might have been hers. She did not impress NBC, however--the result of sabotage from the staff, according to Hartley--and Pauley's contract was extended three years.

But nobody's job is safe in television, and some people on the show complain that Pauley, who had spent only four years in broadcasting before she was hired in 1976, does not work hard enough. "One day she can do a hell of a job," says one of the program's newsmen. "The next day she can blow you right out of the water."

To a viewer who sees her only on the screen, Pauley also seems easily flustered if an interview goes in a direction different from the one she had prepared for. She is slow at shifting gears, an essential ability for anyone who must appear live on-camera. Still, no one can anticipate everything, especially at that hour. Once on Today, when Barbara Walters was interviewing the author of a book about Albert Schweitzer, she asked how the good doctor was doing. Not very well, replied the unhappy writer: "He's dead."

Brokaw's problem is certainly not laziness. Married to his college girlfriend, a former Miss South Dakota, he was NBC's White House correspondent for three years. He now lives with his wife and three daughters in Manhattan. He often jogs four miles in Central Park before he leaves for the office at 5 a.m., and recently he has taken on the added job of writing and delivering the news on Today, a chore that used to be handled by Floyd Kalber. Brokaw's drawback rather is something he cannot do much about: his frosty demeanor. It is a failing that he readily admits --and dismisses. Says he: "When you're on for two hours five days a week, if you try to be something that you are not, it will show through."

How then has Today managed its remarkable comeback? One reason is that all the changes have made it a better show, more thoughtful than Good Morning and almost as lively. "If we have an author of a child care book, we put him on Good Morning" says a publicist. "But if we have something political or serious, we'd rather have it on Today."

The best guess for the program's recent rise in the ratings, however, is that it has finally found a replacement for J. Fred Muggs: Weatherman Willard Scott. "Willard is the first break the show has had in a long time," says one Today veteran. "He sincerely loves people and that shows through. He may be corny, but he makes the show personal by touching people."

The weatherman at NBC'S Washington station for 13 years, Scott was brought to Manhattan last March. A big man (6 ft. 4 in., 275 Ibs.), Scott, 46, initially offended both viewers and staff with his brash ways and home-fried manner. One typical line: "Miss Amy Williams of Salem, Ind., is 100 years old today. She lives by herself, cooks her own meals and makes a mean chicken dumpling. I will be over at lunch, Amy. Expect me, and happy birthday!" So many regular viewers complained that NBC hid piles of hate mail from him; others on the show simply avoided him. "For the first few weeks, I followed Gene Shalit like a puppy dog," remembers Willard. "He was polite, but he didn't have the time of day for me."

Before long, however, even Shalit, Today's amusing, Brillo-headed critic-at-large, found him irresistible. "When I got the job," Willard explains, "my plan was to fill the void left by J. Fred Muggs. If you watch, you'll see that I am trying to weave a web of love. I want to make the whole country feel as if we are one. I may be a cornball, but I am me--not a sophisticated, slick New York wazoo act." Now Scott receives as many as 2,000 fan letters a week. "Most shows are focused around the anchorman," observes CBS's Northshield with some sarcasm. "But the Today show seems to be centered around Willard."

Northshield is convinced that in the easygoing, low-key Kuralt, CBS's Morning has found its own star at long last. Born in North Carolina, Kuralt reported for the Charlotte News and became a CBS correspondent at only 24. Divorced, with two daughters by his first marriage, he now lives with his second wife in Greenwich Village.

In Northshield's opinion, Bob Schieffer, who anchored the show until last September, was cool and predictable --which are not exactly words of praise. What Northshield wants, and what Kuralt is now giving him, are longer, more reflective pieces, and a friendlier, more relaxed atmosphere. Unchanged will be Morning's basic format, which emphasizes hard news and features. "You won't be seeing Catherine Deneuve interviewed on CBS," proudly says Morning's Washington producer, Brian Healy. "Or Rona Barrett spewing out gossip either."

Kuralt has his own formula for the morning. "When people wake up, the first thing they want is to be reassured that the world hasn't blown up while they were asleep," he told TIME'S Elaine Dutka. "Therefore, the first half will have to be fast-paced and information-oriented. In the second half, though, we have more leeway to tackle some of those areas of life that TV news normally doesn't cover --education, medicine, the arts, law. We won't be interviewing authors or doing features on jogging, but I bet we end up doing contemplative pieces, refuting the theory that people rushing off to work don't have time for them."

Yet all connected with the show admit that Morning cannot really compete in the ratings unless it can expand into the time now reserved for Captain Kangaroo. "With a one-hour format, we'll always be the other guy, no matter what we do," laments Morning Executive Producer Elliot Bernstein. So far, however, no one has dared intrude upon the Captain, whose real name is Robert Keeshan. Captain Kangaroo draws even fewer viewers than Morning. But children's programming is popular with politicians and Washington broadcasting bureaucrats, and Keeshan has proved a powerful lobbyist on the upper floors of the CBS Building in Manhattan. Nevertheless, CBS News President William Leonard is hopeful. Says he: "I just do a lot of praying."

Aside from the money--if anything can be aside from the money--it is hard to see why anyone would want to work on any of the three shows. Survivors of those predawn wake-up calls and truncated social lives report strange goings-on in their heads and stomachs. "People aren't supposed to live those kinds of hours," says Schieffer, who had to rise between 2 and 3 a.m. for 20 months. "I woke up one afternoon with a buzz in my head and realized that I had been having it for two years. Then I knew it was time for me to do something different."

Ray Brady lost 15 Ibs. after he joined the CBS show in 1977. Says Morton Dean, who has been sitting in for vacationing anchormen for years: "There's a whole subculture you plug into when you're working those hours, and the primary topic of conversation is sleep." Kuralt, who was away from his wife for two weeks at a time when he was traveling on the road, is worried nevertheless about his new schedule. "I'm going to try to force myself to turn in each night at 7:30 so I can get up at 2," he says. "I'll just have to think of Walter Cronkite as Johnny Carson."

Then there is the coronary-inducing aggravation: things do go bump in the morning. Guests, for instance, say the darndest things at that hour. Brokaw re members talking to Gore Vidal just before they went on the air and telling him that he wanted to talk about politics, not bisexuality, one of Vidal's favorite topics. Vidal politely listened, but when the red light blinked on, sweetly inquired: "Now why is it that we cannot talk about bisexuality?"

Worse than the unguided guest is one who cannot talk at all. Brokaw also recalls with a shudder .ininterview with an Italian film director who suddenly froze and reverted to his native tongue. Brokaw had, as usual, done his homework and answered his own questions while the film director nodded "Si, si, si. "CBS'S Schieffer had a some what similar experience. He was interviewing a Soviet emigree who suddenly began arguing with her translator. For three minutes the two argued in Russian until the matter was resolved.

Hartman's moment of truth came when he was discussing a complicated legal case with a woman lawyer. In the middle of her explanation, she fainted. Cool as always, Hartman signaled for a commercial, checked her pulse, and lifted her onto a couch. Another kind of frisson came when he was interviewing Muham mad Ali, and Ali called him "the Great White Dope" -- to the secret delight of some on the staff.

But there are opportunities as well as sleeplessness and maverick guests on the lobster shift, and many veterans have graduated to higher things. John Chancellor was anchorman of Today before he joined NBC's Nightly News in 1970, and Barbara Walters had the same job before she jumped to ABC in 1976. As a reward for her a.m. heroics, Pauley already has been given the anchor of NBC's Sunday evening news, and Brokaw is a leading candidate to replace Chancellor when he leaves. Hartman is expected to ask for a chance to do more prime-time work when his contract expires next year.

Four months before Dan Rather assumes Cronkite's role on the CBS Evening News, Kuralt is being talked about as an alternative anchorman should Rather not succeed.

And so they dream of glory during those evening hours when the rest of the world is walking the dog, watching Johnny Carson, or returning from the new film at the Bijou. Or perhaps not: the men and women of TV who are in charge of waking up America may merely see the hour hand stretching inevitably toward 2, the minute hand reaching inexorably toward 12 and ... BUZZ! RING! It's time to get up again. Plug in the percolator, scramble the eggs, pour the milk over the granola!

The battle continues.

By Gerald Clarke

Reported by Mary Cronin and Janice Simpson/New York

With reporting by Mary Cronin, Janice Simpson

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