A NICE, LEISURELY STROLL THROUGH CBS’ ‘SUNDAY MORNING’ : Slow TV, Like an Electronic Newspaper, Takes Time With People and Subjects

Most of TV is too fast, too fleeting, a big whooooosh and a goodby. Life on TV usually flips by like cards on a Rolodex, without pause or reflection. That’s why I cherish slow TV.

CBS News’ “Sunday Morning” is slow TV. Its senior executive producer, Robert Northshield, is slow TV. Its anchor, Charles Kuralt, is slow TV. “Maybe we know too much, too fast,” Kuralt once said.

Too much, too fast? Not here. Not even on Sunday’s special soulful, highly unusual two-hour program celebrating Vladimir Horowitz’s return to his native Soviet Union for a concert in Moscow. Not ever.

Since premiering in 1979, the program has been America’s electronic Sunday paper. It just feels like Sunday morning. It’s less an event than a mind-set. When I see “Sunday Morning,” I think of loving attention to detail. I think of Ernest Hemingway taking an entire morning to construct one sentence. I think of being alone in a forest and hearing wondrous new sounds.

Compare browsy “Sunday Morning” with “West 57th,” the finger-snapping disco news magazine returning to CBS April 30. “Don’t miss it!” shout promos for “West 57th” that titillate viewers with hot music and cool faces. If its earlier dose of shows is an indication, “West 57th” each week will blow a few kisses without making real contact with viewers.

“Sunday Morning” takes time with subjects and people. Robert Lipsyte’s recent profile of Detroit Pistons basketball star Isiah Thomas is an example. The screen showed a thoughtful, humane man who returned to his old ghetto neighborhood, a man who achieved success while an older (and perhaps even more athletically talented) brother went on to trouble and drugs.

My wife happened to pass by the set as the Thomas story unfolded. She’d never heard of Thomas or the Pistons and doesn’t give a whit about pro basketball. There she sat, however, drawn in, watching it all with great fascination.

Here’s a series that can tell a story with anyone. One I’ll not forget, from 1980, juxtaposed funerals for a young Irish man killed by a bomb in Belfast (“Just an ordinary bloke,” said a friend) and Earl Mountbatten, who had been assassinated by Irish terrorists. It was a prize, simplicity against pomp, quiet sobs in Belfast against London choral music, anguished faces against stiff upper lips.

“Sunday Morning” also reflects Northshield’s affection for lingering pictorial celebrations of nature. And it reflects Kuralt, a man of eloquence who nevertheless understands the value of silence. There is also something about Kuralt’s rounded body that blends with the program’s rounded edges.

Kuralt does not have to be there to make the 90 minutes work, though.

The accomplished Bruce Morton filled in as anchor April 13 while Kuralt and Northshield were in the Soviet Union preparing for Sunday’s program on Horowitz.

Morton’s stint began with the usual hard-news headlines and later included his chat with CBS Pentagon correspondent David Martin about U.S.-Libya tensions. As always, though, the program’s heart was elsewhere.

There was a swell human-interest piece on clashing attitudes toward undocumented workers in San Antonio. There was a rerun of Lipsyte’s profile of golfing great Arnold Palmer and a piece on opera star Roberta Peters. She might have been speaking of “Sunday Morning” when she said: “Seeing an exquisite picture, seeing great art, hearing a great flute solo . . . it’s uplifting.”

“Sunday Morning” has network TV’s only media critic in the wise and perceptive Ron Powers, who concluded that day that the press had done too much political labeling in its “gang-tackle coverage” of maverick Lyndon H. LaRouche candidates.

Hearing Powers, critic-at-large Heywood Hale Broun and other regulars, you realize that this is a rare TV news program that cares about words.

To say nothing of pictures.

What other network program would lavish so much time on an exhibition of Homer Winslow’s watercolors and also on the grim war photographs of John Phillips?

Phillips’ own gentility was a sharp contrast to the barbarity captured by his camera. The Winslow piece was soundless except for an occasional word from Morton and soft conversation from museum patrons in the background. And for six minutes, at least, the world’s unpleasantness was interrupted by beauty and softness.

You might recall that Northshield and Kuralt had a brief stint on the CBS weekday morning news in 1981. Northshield was executive producer and Kuralt co-anchor (with Diane Sawyer) of a program deemed too slow-paced by then incoming news president Van Gordon Sauter. Among many other things, the bearded Sauter objected to the beards on the program (Powers and sports reporter Ray Gandolf wore them), feeling they made the show look too erudite.

Beards look fine on “Sunday Morning.”

The April 13 program ended with 90 seconds on the hills above Malibu, again gorgeous, green and budding with flowers after being charred by forest fires. There were no words, just the sounds of birds and bees. And this endearing tag came to us the way CBS News’ “Sunday Morning” always comes to us.

Slowly.