Outside Voices: How Anchors Are Chosen In Beantown, Why It Matters For CBS
I'm sure CBS executives enjoyed reading last Sunday's San Jose Mercury News story in which Walter Cronkite voiced his support for Bob Schieffer for the permanent anchor slot at the CBS "Evening News." Actually, the Schieffer saga is a nice one. A strange twist of circumstances lands a respected 68-year-old newshound in the anchor seat as an emergency replacement last year. And lo and behold, he clicks.
The Washington Post writes a flattering story. Network news analyst Andrew Tyndall calls him "the people's anchor." And the ratings at the number three network in the nightly news wars start moving in the right direction. When I interviewed him last year, it was clear that Schieffer was having the time of his life.
"I feel like, in a way, kind of a playing coach," he cracked, adding that at least the anchor gig "will give me something to do until I'm old enough to be on '60 Minutes.""
Of course, CBS has made no secret of its courtship of NBC's "Today" host Katie Couric, an anti-Schieffer if ever there was one. With all due respect to the fact that Couric is NBC's most important personality, I have trouble viewing her as more than a toothy morning host who's conducted a few too many giggly interviews with movie actors. (This week one of Katie's journalistic duties was giving co-worker Ann Curry a haircut on the air.)
Lest I be considered too much of a curmudgeon, I'm not here to try and convince CBS that chasing Couric is a mistake. I'm just saying that having her follow Schieffer is not really an orderly succession. It's whiplash.
Which brings us to the key question here. Are good anchors born? Or does the job transform the anchor? More importantly, do anchors really matter?
The jury will be out for a while at ABC, where the tragic death of Peter Jennings, followed by the wounding of Bob Woodruff and the pregnancy of Elizabeth Vargas have wreaked havoc with that network's plans. And Brian Williams' well-choreographed NBC coronation -- which included visits to nervous affiiliates and a resume-building stint covering the Iraq war -- was dogged by concerns that he lacked the experience and charisma to succeed Tom Brokaw. You don't hear much of that these days.
Here in Boston -- the fifth biggest T.V. market in the country and once home of the nation's most sophisticated local newscasts before we caught the "if it bleeds, it leads" bug -- we've watched a fascinating anchor experiment play out over the last decade.
For a good chunk of the 80s and 90s, the city's T.V. news was dominated by dueling sets of male-female anchor teams who were larger-than-life stars. At Channel 4, it was "Jack and Liz," (Jack Williams and Liz Walker). And at Channel 5, it was "Chet and Nat," the husband-and-wife team of Chet Curtis and Natalie Jacobson.
To say this was the era of the celebrity anchor in is an understatement. When Curtis and Jacboson had their child in 1981, they received roughly 5,000 congratulatory cards. The prevailing theory in Boston T.V. was that the anchor drove the newscast, that their personalities sold the news.
Then, in 1993, a shrewd businessman named Ed Ansin bought Channel 7, an underperforming station with a last-place mentality. He revolutionized the market with an emphasis on flashier graphics, faster pacing, and more coverage of crime. And he made it eminently clear that anchors were interchangeable cogs. Turnover on the desk came fast and furious, with one popular anchor summarily dismissed right before a "sweeps" period.
It didn't take very long for Channel 7 to grab the ratings lead in the 11 o'clock news wars -- with the help of an affiliate switch that turned the station into an NBC outlet during that network's Seinfeld-driven run of prime-time success. Suddenly, Channel 7 was the model to be imitated -- and the era of the anchor was over. By the time the new millenium rolled around, the prevailing theory in Boston television was that "content was king."
But not so fast. Even though Natalie Jacobson is long gone from Channel 5's 11 p.m. newscast, she still rules at 6 o'clock -- a testament to her enduring star power. And a funny thing just happened at Channel 4, which has watched hopelessly as several underwhelming male anchors failed to connect with viewers and dig the station out of its ratings blues.
Two months ago, in an obvious effort to rekindle old magic, the station announced that 62-year-old Jack Williams was being restored to the job he lost eight years ago -- anchoring the signature 11 o'clock newscast. The celebrity anchor -- even an aging one -- is back in Beantown again.
Is there a moral to this story for CBS here? Is it gray-haired gravitas or glimmering star power that's the ticket? Truth is, T.V. news viewing habits change pretty glacially -- and the only clear lesson from the Boston experience is that T.V. executives believe that nothing succeeds like success.
Which might mean it's time to listen to Cronkite and beg Bob Schieffer to hang around.