The New Face of TV News

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In effect, it was a multimillion-dollar gamble. The most authoritative measure of celebrity popularity, the Q ratings prepared by Marketing Evaluations Inc. on Long Island, N.Y., shows that Rather elicits a high positive response from more viewers than any of the other news personalities, including Cronkite. Still, that is no guarantee that he will do well on the evening news. The transition from Cronkite to Rather is certain to be jarring. Viewers also can be very quirky, if often uncannily accurate, in their judgments about anchors—whether they are trustworthy, capable, even decent. The key question is how well Rather will wear, whether he will be figuratively invited into living rooms as Cronkite is.

Rather knows that such invitations are not extended lightly. "It is a very strange chemistry," he says. "We know that intelligence, intensity, integrity—all of which help develop believability—are necessary. We know that a good reporter does not always make a good anchor and vice versa. Being a good writer is certainly handy, but the best writers are not the best anchormen."

As the Rather era dawns and the Cronkite age recedes, television news faces closer examination than ever before. Not since Viet Nam has the American public been so aware of TV's enormous impact—and its immensely frustrating shortcomings. Flickering images of mobs in Tehran mugging for cameramen, and the spectacle of Iranian leaders bypassing U.S. officials to speak with TV correspondents, have set off a debate over television diplomacy and the dangers of media manipulation. Special interests, whether they be farmers driving their tractors to the White House to demand price supports or students burning draft cards to protest conscription, continue to get television's eye simply by creating a commotion. Meanwhile, many pressing but complicated national issues, like energy and SALT, are often given only the most cursory treatment, in part because they defy simplistic pictorial presentations.

Television's intrusions into the political process have never been so obvious as they are in this presidential campaign. One of the landmark events of the election season has been Senator Edward Kennedy's woeful performance Nov. 4 in an interview with CBS's Roger Mudd. Had Kennedy given the same answers in print, a few pundits would have turned purple at his stumbling, but voters would have paid little notice. At the same time, TV can restore what TV taketh away; two weeks ago Kennedy received a gust of upbeat publicity by staging a telegenic mock debate against the tape-recorded voice of President Carter.

As striking as it can be when it covers a papal trip or wartime drama, television news is often unsatisfying. The reason has been the same since the first 15-min. broadcast in 1948: not enough time. "TV still basically indexes rather than reports the news," grouses Fred Friendly. Cronkite agrees: "I think we have been on a plateau. The only way we can improve the news measurably is to go to an hour. We need that desperately."