Newswatch

By Thomas Griffith

One of the most prestigious jobs in broadcasting--that of commentator on the evening network news--has become an endangered species. On CBS, Commentator Bill Moyers hasn't appeared on Dan Rather's program once this year. Over on ABC, George Will figures he has been seen with Peter Jennings on World News Tonight fewer than 20 times since Labor Day. Only at NBC does John Chancellor appear faithfully three times a week with Tom Brokaw.

Moyers and Will recently commiserated with each other on their long absences from the news broadcasts. They do not feel "particularly aggrieved," Will reports, but do feel frustrated. Perhaps more so in Moyers' case. He thinks last year "I fell into a crack" at CBS; his commentary was used more sparingly, and some of the people "on a lower level" on the CBS Evening News were happy to have more time for news items. To Moyers, this is a mistake. Instead of one more snippet of news, he believes, the public wants some attempts to explain and clarify events. That was the tradition at CBS, exemplified in the old days by Eric Sevareid, who with handsome furrowed face gravely discoursed on matters grave. Sevareid gave Moyers two pieces of advice: "Appear regularly, and choose your own subjects." Regularity, Moyers agrees, is necessary to establish an acceptable batting average and to accustom people to your approach: "I'm not ideological. I change my mind a lot, issue to issue. Commentary is a state of mind." It is not, Moyers believes, his views that keep him off the news: "There's never been a constraint editorially on me." Instead he loses out to CBS News's

newfound emphasis on picture stories, some of them trivial. Moyers has not volunteered a commentary for four months.

At ABC, a different explanation is offered for the infrequency of Will's appearances. William Lord, who produces World News Tonight, argues that ABC has become the "major event" network, going all out on the biggest stories, as opposed to that other network (CBS), which gives you "all that day's news." If the event is sufficiently major, Lord says, Will might be asked if he wants to do a commentary. But to Will this is not the best use of him: "You don't deliver what you were hired for, a lot of surprises." As a newspaper columnist, Will deliberately writes "way off the news" at least one-third of the time, believing that "people don't read you for the subject" but because they're interested in "the play of your mind on the world." (Sometimes humility can be an effort for commentators.)

Brief commentaries are not really the best use of Will's and Moyers' television talents. Will much prefers, as well he might, his appearances on This Week with David Brinkley, that lively Sunday-morning hour of baiting politicians where he, Sam Donaldson and Brinkley work together like a basketball team because "we know each other's moves." On the Evening News, CBS allotted Moyers' commentary "time only to make your point but not to build your case." No wonder Moyers prefers doing documentaries, particularly when there is time to "let people tell their own stories." Those teenage pregnant girls, and their lovers, did so on one two-hour Moyers special on the vanishing black family, and it was powerful television. But its effectiveness and the praise it got have not halted the withering away of documentaries under CBS's current bottom-line mentality. Moyers concedes that only 15% of the public watches documentaries and other "thoughtful TV," but it is an influential audience numbering in the millions.

Moyers' five-year CBS contract is almost up, and he gives the impression of a man ready to move on. He has a welcome on public television. The trouble is, he says, that commercial television has the money but not the air time, while public television has the air time but not the money. That black-family documentary, he says, cost $500,000 to make, or one-third of a year's documentary budget on public TV. Moyers may just take a while to decide his future. It will be a sad comment on the economics of television if there is no right place for him.

Unlike the other two commentators, Chancellor is happy where he is and is where he belongs. He doesn't even mind being allowed just 300 words a night. "In Genesis," he says, "that gets you into the fourth day." Being an anchorman, as Chancellor was for twelve years, had to be heady stuff in moments of crisis, or being at the center of things at a political convention, interviewing the deferential mighty, making split-second decisions and quick, informed ad libs. But, as all anchors know, simply reading the nightly news report is something at least 200 other broadcasters can do just as well. Network anchors sometimes feel guilt about their astronomical pay, surrounded by colleagues who make far less, but in a competitive, ratings-happy world, they are paid well for becoming the person that enough people prefer to hear the news from. In 1977, foreseeing a time when NBC might want to switch anchors, Chancellor signed a contract that would convert him into a commentator on the day he stepped down, which came five years later. "I'm just a beat-up old reporter who's been around a lot," he says, "but years of deciding what went into the news taught me what to add or build on" as a commentator.

Politically, Chancellor thinks of himself as in the "extreme center," flanked by a conservative Will and a liberal Moyers. Whatever their politics, in their news commentaries the judgments of the three do not sound all that different. You can hear bolder or more outrageous opinions on any number of call-in talk shows. Chancellor, Will and Moyers strive to interest, but recognize that they are there to analyze the news, not to make it. And sometimes they have to respond quickly. Commentators, Moyers says, are "licensed to express what they don't understand, professional locusts feeding on other people's knowledge."

As television network news more and more resembles the jumpy, jazzy pace of a soft-drink commercial, with all sorts of whirling graphics to illustrate the duller facts, news directors may fear that a moment of reflecting on news might drive the viewers away. This is one more example of the news business deferring to show business.