Outside Voices: Dan Kennedy Says Evening News Needs to Go Later, Go Longer, Go Younger

Each week we invite someone from the outside to weigh in with their thoughts about CBS News and the media at large. This week, longtime media critic and blogger Dan Kennedy, a visiting assistant journalism professor at Northeastern University, gives his thoughts on what the "Evening News" needs. As always, the opinions expressed in "Outside Voices" are those of the author, not ours and we seek a wide variety of voices. Take it away, Dan:

When something is broken, as the Big Three network newscasts surely are, a media critic is tempted to proclaim that what's needed is nothing short of destruction and reinvention. Some of the ideas that come out of these chin-stroking exercises are interesting, such as Jay Rosen's suggestion that CBS News make the Web, rather than television, its primary news-delivery vehicle. Some are just plain dumb, like the notion that if Jon Stewart's brilliant send-up of current events is good on a late-night comedy show, then it would be even better on the evening news. (Never mind that the Stewart trial balloon was floated — or at least allowed to float — not so much by media observers as it was by CBS's chief executive, Leslie Moonves.) Such ideas serve to call attention to the people offering them — to give them a chance to think deep thoughts in public, and to proclaim that the evening news could be saved if only those in power would listen.

Earlier this week I sat down and watched the "CBS Evening News" from start to finish for the first time in months, if not years. What I saw was exactly what I'd expected: a competent and polished, if bland and predictable, wrap-up of about a half-dozen stories, from Hurricane Wilma and the trial of Saddam Hussein to a soft feature about an art-appreciation program that helps police officers solve crime. The anchor, Bob Schieffer, was smooth and professional, with none of the unnerving tics and quirks of his predecessor, Dan Rather. If I only had a half-hour to catch up on the day's events, the "CBS Evening News" would be a reasonably good choice — as would either of its competitors, the "NBC Nightly News" and ABC's "World News Tonight." What I saw, in other words, appeared neither broken nor in need of much fixing.

The dilemma facing the Big Three became apparent only during the commercial breaks. Each time Schieffer disappeared from my screen, he was replaced with a parade of advertisements promising relief from one malady after another: dry eyes, blood clots, arthritis, calcium deficiency, diabetes, insomnia, toenail fungus, bad feet and high cholesterol. There was a message on where to find government information about Medicare. There was an image-building ad from a drug company. As someone who is in the very middle of middle age, I was appalled to think that I had this to look forward to in my declining years. And, of course, I realized that here was the evidence of what is really wrong with the nightly newscasts: they're on at 6:30 p.m., a time when only the elderly can watch them. Everyone else is either commuting, eating dinner or helping the kids with their homework. That, more than anything, explains why the combined network-newscast audience has declined from about 50 million to fewer than 30 million over the past couple of decades. People work longer hours and lead more hectic lives than they did 20 years ago. The networks haven't kept pace.

Curiously enough, it is Rather — the symbol, fairly or unfairly, of what's wrong with network news — who has shown a way out of this morass. In July 2004, at a Harvard gathering of anchors from the Big Three networks, CNN and PBS on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, Rather suggested shifting the evening news to prime time and expanding it to an hour. The program, as Rather envisioned it, would combine a newscast with a magazine-style show — a cross between "60 Minutes" and "Nightline," seven days a week, most likely at 10 p.m. Not that he held out much hope. "I think that is a possibility, but I wouldn't bet the double-wide on it," he said, the urge to indulge in a Ratherism apparently too great to resist. As he predicted, his idea slipped beneath the waters of the nearby Charles River, never to be seen again.

Ratherisms aside, though, the man was on to something. My broadcast news of choice — and that of about 20 million others — is National Public Radio, not because it's good (although it is), but because I can listen to it while I'm driving. After I get home, my first chance to watch television news is generally around 10 p.m. And the choices on the all-news cable channels are either wretched (Greta Van Susteren on Fox), just barely tolerable (Joe Scarborough on MSNBC) or well-intentioned but thin on reporting (Aaron Brown and, now, Anderson Cooper on CNN). If I had the option of watching a solid, hour-long newscast with the resources of a network news division behind it, I'd be there just about every night. And I suspect millions of other viewers would be, too.

One evening in 1977, I was sitting in my college dorm room, watching the "CBS Evening News" on a small black-and-white TV. Walter Cronkite was interviewing Egyptian president Anwar Sadat about the possibility of peace with Israel— a prelude to the historic negotiations that would soon take place between Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin. For television news, it was a moment of transcendence. Cronkite, "the most trusted man in America," was helping to broker an end to hostilities between two ancient enemies.

But it was also a symbol of a time that has passed: a common culture held together, in part, by three networks, not hundreds of channels and millions of Web sites; a common culture in which a network anchor could engage in diplomacy as credibly as — or more credibly than — anyone in the White House or at the State Department. The power and influence that men such as Cronkite, Edward R. Murrow, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley once had are gone forever. The "voice of God," as Leslie Moonves has described the role of the old-fashioned anchor, is a lot quieter these days. Yet the traditional newscast remains a powerful paradigm. Yes, 30 million is smaller than 50 million, but it's still a lot more people than any other news medium reaches.

The network newscast is worth fixing. Expanding it to an hour, and moving it to a time when someone other than the elderly can watch it, is a gamble worth taking. I'd bet the double-wide on it.