The New Face of TV News

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Arledge and Vice President Av Westin have been building up ABC's anemic corps of correspondents. Nowhere is the network's new reporting vitality more apparent than in its coverage of the embassy hostage crisis. ABC's Bob Dyk was the only network journalist on the scene in Tehran for four precious days, and ABC has since had more than its share of Iranian scoops. Partly as a result, the network has been nosing out NBC for second place in the evening-news ratings race with increasing regularity, and is even closing in on CBS, the longtime leader (see chart). "ABC is developing an authentic success," concedes Robert ("Shad") Northshield, executive producer of CBS's adventurous new Sunday Morning magazine show. "They are one hell of an outfit." Adds Press Critic Edwin Diamond: "Roone Arledge is Captain Success."

ABC's renaissance is being felt most acutely by NBC. That network was plagued by uncertain corporate and news leadership through most of the 1970s, and only last year began to get its administrative house in order. Facing mandatory retirement at CBS, Richard Salant, 65, signed on as vice chairman for news at NBC, which has no set retirement age. In August he recruited Bill Small, a hard-driving former CBS Washington bureau chief, to be president of NBC'S news division. Says Small: "We are going to be hiring producers, correspondents, whatever, to increase our bench strength."

Salant and Small have their hands full, and not only with the Nightly News, which has as its host the literate but low-key John Chancellor, 52. The network's eight-month-old magazine show, Prime Time Saturday with Tom Snyder, is floundering. In addition, the Today show, its once prolific profit maker (a reported $7 million last year), has lately slipped in the ratings behind ABC's Good Morning America, a homey mix of news, gossip, interviews and self-improvement tips. Today's own efforts to be more folksy and entertaining have only undermined its prestige. Recalls PBS's Bill Moyers, whose Journal is one of PBS's more thoughtful informational programs: "In the '60s, the show helped set the public affairs agenda for the U.S."

CBS remains television's finest news organization by a wide margin. The network's news executives liken their 1,000-member staff to a ball club with superior depth at every position. With so many good people around, however, CBS is slow to provide challenges and advancement. Says Fred Friendly, former CBS News president and now a Columbia University journalism professor: "What producers and reporters want more than anything else is to get on the air. If another network can promise that, throw away the school tie."

That is precisely what ABC's Arledge has been promising many CBS and NBC journalists. He has lured 29 on-camera reporters and 20 producer-directors from the other networks. CBS is hardest hit, losing 17 to the Arledge recruiting drive, including Correspondents Hughes Rudd, John Laurence, Barry Serafin and Sylvia Chase, as well as off-camera stars like Richard Kaplan, a talented producer with the Cronkite team. Admits one CBS hand: "We're hemorrhaging."