AJR  Columns :     TOP OF THE REVIEW    
From AJR,   April 2002

Midnight Madness   

A discouraging episode for network news

By Thomas Kunkel
Thomas Kunkel (editor@ajr.umd.edu), president of AJR, is dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland.     


Immediately after September 11 there was much breast-beating in the media about the lame state of foreign news coverage and how we let it get that way.

Then a curious thing happened. As networks went wall-to-wall with coverage of the war on terror, as newspapers opened up oceans of pages and battalions of journalists dusted off their passports, a whiff of optimism arose. Here was the thinking: We were getting back into the business of international news, literally with a vengeance. Might it not stick this time? Hadn't we learned our lesson?

Several reporters called me while working up stories with that hypothesis, and they were eager for me to agree with it. I would have liked to, but I couldn't. I felt that as time passed and people put the atlas back on the shelf, news directors would gradually pull their troops home and foreign coverage would go back to its depressing norm. Certainly few if any of those overseas bureaus closed in the early '90s would be reopened.

This would be primarily a financial calculation, naturally. But beyond that I'd come to believe that in many media corporate suites there was now a genuine disdain for serious journalism, especially the kind that needs to be done somewhere over the horizon.

Then came the good folks at Disney and ABC to validate that notion. They spent a feverish few weeks trying to lure David Letterman away from CBS to replace their own late-night staple, "Nightline." As part of the gambit, several anonymous network executives slagged Ted Koppel and allowed as how his venerable news program had ceased to be relevant. What they really meant, of course, was that it was no longer "relevant" to the 18-to-34 crowd, those relentless, still-impressionable consumers whom the networks chase after like boozy sailors. To network programmers, Koppel could only be relevant if he stripped to the waist and ate rats for dinner.

But in truth, what program could be more relevant to these times than "Nightline"? After all, it was created in the wake of the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979, when Americans got their first real dose of the Islamic world's rage toward the West.

More than two decades later, "Nightline" and its maestro, Koppel, are still trying to explain a perplexing universe to us.

Letterman's decision to stay put at CBS presumably reprieves "Nightline," assuming Koppel elects to remain in light of the dissing. But the whole clumsy episode has rattled nerves in the network news divisions.

It's true that in 20 years much has changed in the television news game. Cable's proliferating news channels have eaten into all the network audiences. Even so, "Nightline" still draws more than 5 million viewers an evening, more than Letterman does and as much as 10 times more than tune in to a typical offering on CNN or MSNBC or Fox News. Letterman might be a better advertising draw, but "Nightline" is no slouch. As Koppel himself has pointed out, the show has put more than half a billion dollars into the ABC coffers, and it still makes money today.

Besides, whatever happened to that now-quaint notion that says companies profiting from the public airwaves have a responsibility to that same public? "Nightline" is especially valuable as one of the few remaining oases for foreign news on network television, an area where priorities have become increasingly skewed.

In January I attended a conference in London where British and American journalists and educators compared notes on a variety of topics, including television news coverage. Richard Sambrook, director of news for the BBC, maintained that the biggest difference boiled down to this: In Britain the networks still basically spend their budgets on newsgathering, while in the States they increasingly spend it on the talent. The wager is that personality matters more than program substance. "Katie Couric is a fantastic news presenter," Sambrook said, "but is she really worth $60 million? One wonders what could be done with [news] content if she was making $40 million, or $20 million."

One might also wonder why ABC, if it is so concerned about its profitability, doesn't produce more programs that people might actually want to watch, instead of, say, "The Chair," "According to Jim" or "Bloopers No. 5." Or if they really want to move Ted Koppel, maybe these creative geniuses should simply give him the Saturday night hole they're currently plugging with James Bond movies.

Then again, it's been more than a decade since I belonged to the 18-to-34 demographic. My opinion is no longer relevant.

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