Newswatch: The Age of Cronkite Passes

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For nearly 20 years now, millions of Americans have first learned about the bad news—and sometimes the good—from the reassuring baritone of Walter Cronkite. With his retirement this week as anchorman from the CBS Evening News goes the man who more than anyone else has shaped and given stature to the role. In the fickle high-risk arena of television, where admiration swiftly changes to boredom or dislike, Cronkite, "the most trusted man in America," has been the stablest on-screen presence of them all. His departure is forcing a restudy, at all three networks, of the job itself.

Being anchorman isn't something that everybody can do, but it is something that hundreds can. Millions of advertising dollars, and each network's prestige, turn on how well this or that person delivers roughly the same news, introducing brief snatches of picture coverage and reading words that usually were written by others. Can Cronkite's replacement, Dan Rather, with that four-square forthrightness of his, and his adrenalized ambition, keep the loyalty of those accustomed to Cronkite's businesslike, low-key delivery? Or will NBC's John Chancellor, another in the trusty Cronkite mold, steal away some of CBS's audience? Will ABC news, which tried to de-emphasize the anchorman and gambled on hi-tech flashiness instead, be able to lift itself out of third place? The air is full of expensive uncertainty.

Cronkite, who won't be 65 until November, is leaving the Evening News earlier than expected.* He does so to make way for Rather, to whom CBS is paying $8 million over a five-year period to keep him from being raided by ABC. But if Cronkite is relaxed about stepping down from the Evening News, he seems the only one at CBS who is.

Rather is a hustling, intense reporter with a staccato style. Will he be able, like Cronkite, to leave a steadying impression of calm underneath all the turmoil of the news? In Rather's eagerness to keep his commitment to 60 Minutes too, he has been taping so many segments in advance that his smile has lately seemed a little tenser. He also knows that around CBS there were those who would have preferred Roger Mudd (who, being passed over, defected to NBC) or the amiable Charles Kuralt, whose CBS morning news has become something of a hit. The other two networks are also in the mood for change, but are waiting to see how well Rather works out.

Roone Arledge, the man who has upgraded ABC's World News Tonight, is convinced that with new technologies in news gathering and the departure of Cronkite, uno one person will be that important to an evening broadcast." But considering CBS's twelve-year dominance of the ratings under Cronkite, it could be argued that there is still something up to date about Cronkite's old-fashioned approach to the news.