A Backstage Tour of "Nightline"   

Nightline: History in the Making and the Making of Television
By Ted Koppel and Kyle Gibson
Times Books

Nightline: History in the Making and the Making of Television
By Ted Koppel and Kyle Gibson
Times Books
432 pages; $25

Twelve days into the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, expansionistic ABC News President Roone Arledge lobbied the network's chief executive for temporary domain over the 11:30 p.m. time slot.

For how long, ABC President Fred Pierce wanted to know.

Till the crisis ended, Arledge replied, "three, four weeks tops... These things don't last."

That was better than 16 years and 4,000 shows ago. Today, the hostages are long free and the Ayatollah is long dead, but "Nightline" rolls on, perhaps television's most quality-conscious news program.

Like many successful institutions, "Nightline" was a fortuitous byproduct of timing, luck and genius (see "Team Nightline," March). Arledge was looking to reenergize ABC News. The network had long sought stronger competition for NBC's invincible Johnny Carson. A hot news story was handy.

And an about-to-turn-40 correspondent named Ted Koppel was restless.

This book recounts how these conditions converged to create a late-night news institution.

It is in many ways an odd book, starting with the nonsensical subtitle. Despite the dual author credits, the primary writer is Gibson, a former "Nightline" producer. Koppel appears mostly in the third person, except for an introduction, conclusion and occasional guest chapter (such as one on interviewing style).

The book is very loosely organized, part memoir, part history, part highlight reel. It delivers precious little of its promised analysis of "how 'Nightline' has changed the way Americans understand history."

But don't worry too much about all that. Mostly, this is just a plain good read, a richly anecdotal backstage tour of an interesting show.

If anything, the theme is this: how a middle-of-the-pack news chaser like Koppel gradually but impressively took hold of the program, imposed a signature style and bred that rare journalistic paradox, a star vehicle that is also a respected news product.

Not everything happened right away. First came the hostage specials, then permission to launch a permanent show, but for only 20 minutes a night. Network brass flirted with the possibility of bigger names as anchor, including CBS' Dan Rather, who said no. But they soon settled on Koppel, who came with just the right attitude: "Whether this program was 15 minutes or a half-hour, it was mine."

While the book gives proper credit to executive producers like Bill Lord, Rick Kaplan and Tom Bettag, there's little question that Nightline became Koppel's show.

At first, he resisted some non-serious news topics, apparently almost quitting over a decision to dump a program on unemployment to cover manic actor John Belushi's death. But he came around, and "Nightline" dealt with everything from New Zealand penguins to Tiananmen Square, Liberace to Lebanon.

It experimented with formats, holding "town meetings" on drugs and AIDS, featuring a "day in the life" of police chiefs and stock brokers, letting reporters take tiny cameras ("high-eights") into harrowing settings like Haiti or Somalia.

And, of course, it trademarked the live, on-air confrontation: the Iranian diplomat vs. the wife of a U.S. hostage; Archbishop Desmond Tutu vs. South African Foreign Minister Pik Botha. Staff members once rigged up a makeshift wall so Israeli and Palestinian spokespeople would appear together.

Tying all this together has been the no-nonsense, I'm-asking-the-questions-here leadership of Koppel.

His nightly introduction (known as Page Two) has moved from "laconic, dispassionate and conventional" to a style that is personal, innovative and pointed. "I'm not bald, and..that is my own hair up there," he began one night. He called Oliver North "an accomplished liar," admitted he had enjoyed hanging around with Los Angeles gang members and introduced a show on the dethroning of Miss America Vanessa Williams by saying, "There is no point in avoiding a subject simply because almost everybody is interested in it."

Koppel's interviewing style is renowned. He listens carefully (never preparing questions in advance), gets to the point and, increasingly as his stature has risen, lectures difficult guests.

"That is one of our longest and most eloquent evasions of a question I've ever had," he scolded one interviewee. "You're not a spring chicken anymore and, forgive me, you're overweight," he informed Sen. Edward Kennedy.

"When I come on your program I'll answer your questions; now you're on my program. You answer mine, all right?" he told another guest who tried to turn the tables.

Droll and determined he is, but seldom rude. And that seems the secret of the whole enterprise. As this book makes clear, "Nightline" respects its guests, its audience, its material and, perhaps above all, the magic of good television.