That was the tide shifting that you felt last week when CBS News’ Dan Rather announced his retirement after 24 years at the anchor desk. Unlike the accolades Tom Brokaw’s been getting in his last trot around the track before he signs off on NBC Nightly News for the last time this week, Rather’s departure is different.
Despite the Texas “aw-shucks” and the “Ratherisms” that would make Andy Griffith proud, his reign at the former “Tiffany Network” was often laced with controversy, and you have to feel that the recent “Memogate” incident played a part in the sudden retirement. An internal report about why CBS aired an inaccurate story about President Bush’s National Guard service during Vietnam is due soon, and there’s speculation that Rather wanted out before it became public.
But as any local CBS affiliate will tell you (albeit off the record), “Memogate” is one thing, but the third-place ratings CBS News has been dishing out to them for quite a while is the bigger factor. Even here in Charlotte, where CBS ran second behind ABC in their early evening newscast, Rather’s now being beaten by a short margin by NBC. CBS affiliate stations want the Rather resignation, but for my money, who cares, at this point?
That’s because with Rather leaving in March 2005, and Brokaw gone after this week, that leaves Peter Jennings as the sole veteran anchor-saurus on the evening news desk. Oh, it’s 2004, but we’ll see two white guys with just enough gray in the temples to spell “experience” slide into the million-dollar seats at CBS and NBC.
But Uncle Walter is long gone, and the cable universe and new and faster ways of getting information before 6:30 pm have moved the game elsewhere. The anchors will get trotted out at elections and go across the country or go overseas when a big story hits, but the era of the nightly network newscast is drawing to a close, unless their networks can put on the innovation hats and draw up a new model.
REALITY CHECK There’s a local connection in a reality show that begins airing this week. Starr Ilzhoefer, a 27-year-old Charlotte attorney who does fashion designing on the side, is one of the contestants on Project Runway, a new series on Bravo that pits budding designers against one another. The show is hosted by Heidi Klum.
Stay tuned…
Shannon Reichley is an independent television producer and former news manager at WBTV. E-mail at Shannon.Reichley@cln.com.
This article appears in Dec 1-7, 2004.
