The New Face of TV News

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The network news divisions, once money-losing sidelines maintained largely for reasons of prestige, are reportedly running in the black at CBS and NBC, and ABC News hopes to be profitable soon. Because news audiences are up by some 7 million viewers, the networks can charge advertisers more for commercials. Of course, costs have also risen (each network will spend upwards of $130 million on coverage this year, more than double the figure in 1975), but information programming remains far cheaper to produce than the entertainment variety. Consider the case of 60 Minutes: a one-hour installment typically brings in $1.6 million in advertising revenue but reportedly costs only $275,000 to produce, less than half the average cost of an hour-long entertainment program. Besides, as network executives are evidently learning, reality can be more entertaining than its imitation. Says CBS News President William Leonard: "There just isn't enough mediocrity to go around in the fiction area. In five years, I think more than 50% of programming will be informational."

In anticipation of that day, some enterprising TV documentary maker could weave a gripping, real-life drama from the inside story of how a revolution in TV news led to a multimillion-dollar bidding war for an anchorman. The individual most responsible for the revolution is, ironically, not basically a journalist at all. He is a 48-year-old television sports impresario known for his polka-dotted shirts and khaki safari jackets, flaming red hair and all but total inability to return phone calls. His name: Roone Arledge.

From the time Arledge joined ABC in 1960 (he became president of ABC Sports in 1968), almost everything he touched turned to gold: NCAA football, Wide World of Sports, Monday Night Football (with the ineffable Howard Cosell in the announcing booth), even the Battle of the Network Stars and all its banal offspring. Under his leadership, ABC bid millions to televise the Olympics and transformed the games into global theater. His use of multiple cameras, instant replay, slow motion, on-field microphones and other electronic gimmickry revolutionized sports coverage.

The television news community howled—partly in laughter, partly in protest—when Arledge became president of ABC News in June 1977. (He remains president of ABC Sports and is executive producer of the Lake Placid Winter Olympics.) Journalists feared that he would bring game-show hype to the evening news, as described so chillingly in Paddy Chayefsky's 1976 movie Network. Arledge did little to allay those suspicions when, shortly after taking over, he devoted 19 minutes of one 22½-minute nightly newscast to a lurid account of the capture of an accused killer, the so-called Son of Sam.

Arledge and ABC News have come a long way since then. The razzle-dazzle special effects that Arledge imported from the sports division have been muted, or else copied by the competition. Barbara Walters, lured in 1976 from NBC with that notorious $1 million-a-year contract, has left the anchor duties to do interviews. Her incompatible coanchor, Harry Reasoner, has fled to CBS'S 60 Minutes. The man who has emerged as their replacement, experienced Newsman Frank Reynolds, 56, has given ABC's World News Tonight stability and style.