Days Of Turbulence, Days of Change

By James Kelly

Television has always been a land of flux, a place where few programs last beyond two seasons and yesterday's top-rated star is today's trivia question. But for more than 30 years, all three networks have aired evening news shows that reach more people than any single newspaper or magazine. Turning on the TV set around dinnertime to watch the news has become a sort of flickering ritual that unifies much of the country for 30 minutes a day.

Now, however, the producers of the three broadcasts -- CBS Evening News with Dan Rather, NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw and ABC's World News Tonight with Peter Jennings -- fear they may be losing some of that hold. Besieged by budget cuts and competition, the news departments are going through a period of turmoil that is urgently forcing them to re-examine how they go about keeping Americans informed. Though most executives insist the quality of their flagship news programs will not be affected, many are not so sure. Says a CBS Evening News producer: "There comes a point when a worldwide newsgathering operation stops being a worldwide newsgathering operation."

Anxieties are running highest at CBS, where the sharpest knife is being wielded. Over the past 18 months, some 150 of the CBS News division's 1,400 employees have lost their jobs. In January, Chief Executive Officer Laurence Tisch asked News President Howard Stringer to cut up to $50 million from this year's nearly $300 million budget. Stringer presented a plan to Tisch last week that called for about $30 million in savings. Within two days, he began firing more than 200 staffers, including about 20 of the division's 75 or so full-time correspondents. "We can survive it," says Rather, "but not happily."

As names of the casualties filtered through the division's headquarters on Manhattan's West 57th Street, a mixture of anger and shock gripped employees. Rather refused to help pick those who should be laid off, and an anonymous letter circulated through the building urging a walkout to protest the cutbacks -- and to show support for the news writers, who struck CBS and ABC last week. (NBC's employees belong to another union.) Negotiations for a new contract collapsed when the networks insisted on greater flexibility in firing workers and hiring more temporary employees; during the walkout, news scripts are being written by managers and producers on the broadcasts. Rather, Jennings and 85 other sympathetic employees signed a letter saying they were "appalled" by management's demands. Says a CBS producer: "I've been here a long time, and I've never seen morale this bad."

At ABC, which pared 200 from its news staff of 1,470 before Capital Cities Communications took control in early 1986 and eliminated 75 more positions last year, News President Roone Arledge has ordered a re-examination of the division and its $275 million budget. Arledge's request for suggestions has already claimed a victim: Av Westin, vice president for program development, who distributed to Capital Cities/ABC executives an unpublished magazine article he wrote. Titled "Days of Penury, Days of Affluence," Westin's 18- page memo argued that ABC's producers were more efficient 18 years ago, when he produced the network's nightly news show and funds were scarcer, than they are today. Arledge, who interpreted the memo as a bid for his job, has temporarily relieved Westin of his duties, which include producing the newsmagazine show 20/20.

At NBC, whose parent company, RCA, was bought by General Electric in June, News President Lawrence Grossman insists there are no plans to cut his $230 million budget or 1,330-member staff. Nonetheless, NBC News has hired McKinsey & Co. management consultants to study the newsgathering operations, and rumors ( persist that next year will bring a 10% slash.

The budget pressures come at a time when the three networks are already contending with a growing challenge to their onetime dominance of international and national TV coverage. The competitors -- Cable News Network, syndicated news-feed services and local stations -- all use the same satellite technology the networks do to bring live pictures from around the world. Though the number of people watching Rather, Brokaw and Jennings has remained steady at about 44 million, the networks' share of the overall audience has gradually declined. In 1980 the three broadcasts attracted 72% of the viewers; so far this season the proportion is 63%.

The straitened circumstances have only intensified the ratings war, in which a single point translates into $19 million in advertising revenues a year. For nearly two decades CBS Evening News held the top slot, but it tumbled into second place during the last three months of 1986, when Brokaw narrowly beat Rather and NBC earned its first quarterly victory since the heady days of Huntley and Brinkley in 1967.* So far this year Brokaw has won six out of nine weeks.

Rather, Brokaw and Jennings compete directly in only 112 of the nation's 205 TV markets; in many instances affiliates have shifted the programs to make room for more profitable game shows. In December, for example, WABC in New York switched the Jennings broadcast from 7 p.m., where it finished third against Rather and Brokaw, to 6:30 and replaced it with Jeopardy. The popular game show beats the two news programs, thus allowing WABC to charge more for commercials in that time period. World News Tonight achieves better ratings at 6:30 than it did at 7, but Jennings complains, "I did not like the move at all. I want to compete head to head."

The assault on network news dates from 1980, when Ted Turner started Cable News Network. Based in Atlanta and available 24 hours a day, CNN reaches 38.5 million homes, or 44% of all U.S. households with TV sets. Though an average of only about 600,000 households watch CNN daily, viewer levels are highest in the early evening. An even more serious threat to Rather and his rivals comes from news-feed services like Conus Communications, a Minneapolis-based cooperative that distributes footage via satellite. Founded in 1984, Conus comprises some 50 stations -- network affiliates and independents -- that operate as a sort of video wire service. Stations share stories by beaming them to Conus headquarters, which relays them to other members.

What makes Conus possible is the Newstar, a van equipped with an editing facility and a 90-inch satellite dish mounted on the rear. The $210,000 vehicle has supplanted the helicopter as the most prized piece of technology in a station's newsgathering arsenal. At WCVB, the ABC affiliate in Boston, for example, News Director Phil Balboni has replaced the network's Saturday- evening news show with an expanded local program that includes national and international coverage provided by Conus and other news services. Some stations have grown even more ambitious; more than a dozen sent their own anchors to Geneva in 1985 to cover the U.S.-Soviet summit via satellite.

Thus the evening shows increasingly try to distinguish themselves from local programs. "The syndication services are going to cover the snowfall in Colorado and the Amtrak train crash," says Brokaw. "We have to provide the context and look ahead."

The quest to be different can be rocky. In 1982 Van Gordon Sauter, then president of CBS News, turned the Evening News away from Washington and toward emotion-laden stories about how government policies affect citizens. But by 1985 the broadcast had softened too much into what one CBS correspondent calls "touchy-feely stuff." In May, when Tom Bettag became executive producer, Rather took him for a walk at the Cloisters, a museum of medieval art in upper Manhattan. "I told him I wanted the broadcast to be harder, to run more reports out of Washington," recalls Rather. The administration of the Washington bureau was beefed up, writers were instructed to avoid the cute prose that sometimes curdled Rather's delivery, and correspondents in the field were told, as one put it, "to make sure we do stories with the word today in them."

At ABC, Jennings stresses international news, a tactic that capitalizes on his 15 years of experience as a foreign correspondent. He professes not to feel pressured by his third-place finish, partly because he has steadily increased his audience. Yet ratings influenced the decision a year ago to run a segment every Friday called "Person of the Week," which profiles a key newsmaker. "We have a younger audience than the other two broadcasts, and they tend to go out early Friday nights, missing the show," explains Executive Producer William Lord. The feature, which News President Arledge helped conceive, has indeed lured viewers, but Jennings found the promotional ads so embarrassing that he persuaded Arledge to drop them.

At NBC, News President Grossman added correspondents to the White House and Pentagon beats and emphasized the broadcast's "Special Segment," an investigative report or a background piece tied to the news that runs four or five minutes. Studies commissioned by NBC indicated that viewers thought Brokaw was the least experienced of the three anchormen, so the network ran TV and newspaper ads that showed him meeting with world leaders. Sometimes, however, the line between news and show business blurs. Last year Brokaw interviewed President Reagan during the Super Bowl, and in January he delivered a news update from the Fiesta Bowl. "It is in my interest to do promotion," insists Brokaw. "No one is breaking away from the pack, so we are looking for every advantage we can get."

Over the past year, the three shows have shaved costs through shrewder management: satellite time is scheduled more carefully, control rooms are booked for fewer hours, and tape is sent by plane instead of satellite whenever possible. Network executives acknowledge, however, that budgets have grown so dramatically that only a redesign of the newsgathering operation will produce lasting savings (see box). CBS News' budget, for example, totaled only $89 million in 1978. "I approached this ((budget-cutting)) process as if we were starting CBS News from scratch," says Stringer, the division president. "It is an anxious time, but it is also an opportunity to apply a creative mind and rethink everything we do."

Cost consciousness has already had a subtle effect on coverage. Last year a CBS producer wanted to examine the impact of U.S. sugar quotas by focusing on a Caribbean country where the restrictive policies had forced some farmers to give up sugar production and turn to growing marijuana. After Bettag calculated that the story would take two weeks to film, he suggested the producer concentrate instead on how Washington's policies had bolstered sugar growers in Louisiana. "What the belt tightening affects are those stories that might be good but that we don't have to do," Bettag maintains.

Though some observers believe the evening news shows are in danger of extinction, most disagree. "Day in and day out, the local stations are not going to cover the events the network does," says William Small, who served as senior vice president of CBS News from 1974 to 1978 before holding the job of president of NBC News from 1979 to 1982. "If the Pope returns to Poland, a station in Chicago, which has a high Polish population, may cover it. But if something happens in Thailand, it's highly unlikely."

Many executives do acknowledge that the format needs to be rethought, partly because the three shows are so similar. ABC seems furthest ahead in this process. Paul Friedman, director of overseas news for World News Tonight, is currently in New York City revamping the program. If Arledge approves a major overhaul, it may be unveiled as early as May; if only minor changes are okayed, they will be introduced gradually. One plan calls for the program to begin with a quick rundown of the news, with Jennings narrating some of the film clips. Then the bulk of the show would be devoted to analysis, either a round-table discussion of the day's biggest news event or a lengthy filmed report by a top correspondent.

If audience share continues to decline, one or more of the networks could conceivably decide to drop anchor and have the correspondents introduce their own segments. Though that scenario is remote, there is an increasing sense at all three networks that nothing is sacrosanct about the nightly news show. Asked if he would still like to be anchoring the CBS Evening News five years from now, Rather, 55, answers quickly, "If God is good to me and with a little luck, yes." Ten years from now? Hesitation. "Gee, I don't know. It's a young person's game." On the chair next to him in his office is a small needlepoint pillow with the saying ALWAYS IS NOT FOREVER.

FOOTNOTE: *NBC had a quarterly rating of 11.8, CBS 11.6 and ABC 10.6. That translates into 10.3 million sets tuned to Brokaw, 10.1 million to Rather and 9.2 million to Jennings.

CHART: TEXT NOT AVAILABLE

Credit: TIME Chart by Nigel Holmes

Caption: TUNING IN % of viewing audience who watch network news

Description: Bar chart, figures for 1980 to 1987.

With reporting by Mary Cronin/New York and Marc Hequet/Minneapolis