A ‘SUNDAY MORNING’ NETWORK NEWS PAUSE THAT REFRESHES

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer .

--Henry David Thoreau

What I try to do is a show that I think works. --Shad Northshield

Ah, network TV news. An urgent pace, pinball graphics and a feeling that if Armageddon has begun, the correspondent assigned the story had best bring it in at 1 minute, 45 seconds, or start life anew at PBS.

Consider, then, nearly two minutes of nothing but the sights of trees, of flowers, of snow-covered fields, the sounds of geese honking, a bubbling stream or maybe just the wind. Unusual for a news program, but it’s the usual ending on “CBS News Sunday Morning.”

True, the 90-minute effort, anchored by Charles Kuralt, does recap the week’s top stories. It even has been known to emit breaking news.

But it is better known for stopping to smell the roses, so to speak, for doing such odd things as celebrating Bach, talking with old soldiers, visiting the jazz world, ruminating about Renoir. In short, it contemplates life instead of racing through it.

As Christmas approaches, other programs again will concentrate on Santa Claus and crowded stores. Not “Sunday Morning.” It has a Yuletide tradition of its own. Sunday’s cover story will be “Our Gifts to Us,” its annual report on new acquisitions of public parks and land for present and future generations of Americans to enjoy.

A few words, now, from Robert (Shad) Northshield, a salty, bearded ex-newspaperman who, save five months out in 1983 for work on CBS’ ill-fated “American Parade,” has run “Sunday Morning” since its premiere on Jan. 28, 1979:

“My wife says I’ve got the best job that anybody’s ever had. I don’t know about that. But it’s certainly the best job I’ve ever had. She says, ‘It’s because they let you do all those things you’re interested in.’

“Well, the fact is, when you get to be 64 years old, you find you’re interested in an awful lot of things. As you get older, you acquire more things that you’re interested in.”

Such things often show up on his show. Such things have shown up in the 25 documentaries he’s done for both CBS and NBC in the 32 years he’s spent in network television.

The topics on those programs have ranged from grizzly bears to the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II, from the half-breed kids that GIs left behind in Vietnam to two programs--20 years apart--on Navajo life.

Music also is high on his list. Back in 1974 when he worked at NBC, his “The Navajo Way”--a follow-up to “The Way of the Navajo” he did for CBS in 1954--employed bits of Bach. It also underscored a sad sundown scene outside an off-reservation bar with Stan Getz’s brooding version of “Here’s That Rainy Day.”

When Northshield began “CBS News Sunday Morning,” he wanted a distinctive opening theme. He recalled that years ago he’d heard a 29-second trumpet fanfare called “Abblasen” by an 18th-Century composer named Reicha. It now opens the program.

Last month, he had jazz pianist Billy Taylor--a regular “Sunday” contributor--do a segment on veteran jazz bassist Milt Hinton. Another jazz veteran--trumpeter Doc Cheatham--is scheduled to be featured on Dec. 29.

Classical music and performers also are regularly featured. In November, the program profiled soprano Jessye Norman and composer Aaron Copland. Northshield wrote the narration for the program’s 15-minute celebration of Copland at age 85.

“The piece probably had three minutes of narration, but it was hard work,” he said. “It takes great effort to keep your mouth shut. In television, writing involves keeping your mouth shut more than anything else.”

That is no mean task for the producer, who by nature is an expansive, gregarious man, full of opinions, often corrosive, on matters major, minor and in between.

His first important job in life was as a lieutenant of infantry in World War II. He was wounded in the Battle of the Bulge. After the war, he became a Chicago newspaperman.

That was at the tail end of the halcyon days of Chicago newspapering--a shot of rye for breakfast, scandal for lunch and maybe a good ax murder before dinner. Alas, while it may be nice to be part of a legendary period, Northshield said he never was of the Windy City’s hard-boiled, blow-the-lid-off-the-town school of journalism.

“I wasn’t very good at that,” he said with a sigh. “I was a lousy reporter and a good writer. The writing very often covered up for inadequate reporting--which was caused not by laziness or stupidity, but by shyness, of all things.”

In 1948, he found himself intrigued by something new called television. He went into it five years later at CBS, producing “Adventure,” a children’s educational series hosted by a chap named Mike Wallace. After that he produced the acclaimed “Seven Lively Arts,” then put in two years at ABC, producing public-affairs broadcasts.

Then came 17 NBC years, as a documentary maker and producer. The producing included “Today,” “The Huntley-Brinkley Report,” the coverage of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space shots, and NBC’s election-night broadcasts from 1962 through 1974.

In 1977, when docudramas--dramatizations of actual stories or events--were considered the coming thing in TV entertainment, he also tried that. He talked the authorities at NBC into letting him head a docudrama unit.

His theory was that it would be better to have a newsman at the helm than an entertainment type who might allow the bending of facts in the cause of high drama. But three story proposals later, NBC declared the idea a mistake and folded the unit.

Northshield returned to CBS. In September, 1978, he became executive producer of the “CBS Morning News,” then anchored by Bob Schieffer and later by Kuralt and Diane Sawyer. Four months later, he created “Sunday Morning,” which, with Kuralt anchoring, displaced two religious programs and “Camera Three.”

None of those three previous shows had made money. “Sunday Morning” wasn’t expected to, either, although it wound up doing that, to everyone’s surprise. A small profit, Northshield says, although nowhere near as much as the “CBS Evening News” or the top-rated “60 Minutes,” which he reckons together “must make hundreds of millions of dollars.

“What happened is we got terribly lucky with this show,” he said. “Nobody expected anything, including us. I had just been fired from NBC”--he actually took early retirement--”and this was my last shot. And I just didn’t care. Nothing worse would happen to me.”

Fortunely, two “wonderful, old, old friends” for whom he worked--senior producer Burton Benjamin and then-CBS News President William Leonard--left him alone to do his thing. Despite this year’s turmoil and discord at CBS News over other matters, the leave-it-alone tradition still persists on “Sunday Morning.”

Such never has been the case at the perennially third-in-ratings “Morning News.” The program often is tinkered with in efforts to improve its Nielsen fortunes and recently took aboard its fifth executive producer in seven years.

Both Northshield and Kuralt were removed from its ranks in March, 1982, when Chicago anchorman Bill Kurtis was brought in to join Sawyer--now with “60 Minutes”--in morning combat with “Today” and ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Northshield credits George Merlis, his “Morning News” successor (he’s no longer with the program either) with improving the program’s ratings with a faster-paced production.

“When I did the show, everybody felt the pace was too slow,” Northshield said. “I think they may be right. But the pace was right for Charles Kuralt. And I think that eventually Kuralt and Sawyer would have become Huntley and Brinkley.

“Because you either accept Kuralt or you don’t. But I think it can be proved that in time people do.”

It could be argued that in addition to Kuralt’s old-shoe style, people also accept the slower, reflective approach of “Sunday Morning,” although it must be noted that the program has no network competition in its time period.

According to Nielsen audience estimates from the start of 1985 through Dec. 8, “Sunday Morning” actually has outperformed the “Morning News” in the ratings (each rating point currently represents 850,900 homes with television).

The “Morning News” has averaged a 3.1 rating. “Sunday Morning” has gotten a 4.5, which favorably compares with the 4.6 average of “Today” and the 4.9 of “Good Morning America.”

For the current season, which began in September, “Sunday Morning” has a 5.1 ratings average.

The figures suggest that not all in TV news need be whirling graphics and a succession of short, punchy, highly visual stories to succeed. Still, there are rumors of fierce debate about this between TV’s old guard and the medium’s young, with-it whippersnappers.

“Oh, sure,” said Northshield, such debate is heard, particularly at CBS News, “where a lot of guys are talking about the Yesterday People and those (the whippersnappers) who are video-fluent. I certainly qualify as one of Yesterday’s people. But I also think I’m video-fluent.

“Still, there’s this argument that you’re old-fashioned or you love ‘West 57th,’ ” he said referring to the jazzy new CBS News series--it is returning to the CBS schedule in March--that some critics and some of the Yesterday People have sneered at as “yuppie news.”

“The argument is that you either hate ‘West 57th’ or you’re a snot-nosed punk who loves it,” he said. “But I don’t find myself--or the people who work on ‘Sunday Morning’--in either category. I think ‘West 57th’ is interesting and good. I think the old-fashioned things are interesting and good. I just don’t think there is any stringent set of rules.”

He conceded that some of the younger TV news folk--particularly those degreed in such things as “communications arts”--could be called studiods .

He smiled at a possible definition of same: one who knows the latest in TV technique but rarely, if ever, ventures outside the studio to the real world for a real story.

Well, he said, that might apply to some of the younger troops nowadays “because they are video-fluent. But that’s not enough.”

He submitted that form must never take precedence over content--and fretted that there are those who actually believe that “form dictates content. If that’s true, I don’t want to be a part of this world.”

The world that is his Sunday show has drawn critics’ praise.

However, Northshield said, the biggest raves it gets from viewers are for the gentle, pastoral scenes that end the proceedings each Sunday.

“That’s clearly the most popular thing in the show,” he said. “I think it’s because they can make it anything they want in their minds. Oddly, a lot of people write to say how much they like the music.” He smiled.

“We don’t use any music on it. It’s all in their heads.”