USA Today Plans a TV Version of Itself

USA Today, the national newspaper whose short stories and flashy graphics remind some readers of television news coverage, plans to hit the airwaves itself in the fall of 1988.

The proposed video version of the newspaper was unveiled here Tuesday by Grant Tinker, former chairman of NBC, and Steve Friedman, former executive producer of NBC’s top-rated “Today” show.

Projected as a half-hour, five-night-a-week, satellite-fed syndicated series along the lines of “Entertainment Tonight,” the untitled program will be the first project overseen by the brash, joke-cracking Friedman in his new capacity as the New York-based president of GTG Entertainment. The production company was set up earlier this year by Tinker and Gannett Co., which owns USA Today, 6 TV stations, 14 radio stations and more than 90 daily newspapers.

Tinker, Friedman and Gannett Chairman Allen H. Neuharth discussed plans for the series at a news conference here in the headquarters of USA Today, where the program will originate.

The program will be targeted for prime-access time--the early evening before network programming begins--and will have a staff of 125, including anchors, Friedman said.

However, he emphasized that the series will “rely heavily on the editorial staff” of USA Today but not as correspondents for the TV show. Rather, he said, they might appear on it to talk about the stories that they have covered for the next day’s edition of USA Today.

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“We are going to show the process of gathering the news as well as report it,” Friedman said. He also said that stations that agree to broadcast the show will be asked to have their own reporters contribute pieces to it.

The program would employ a four-section format now featured by USA Today--News, Money, Sports and Life. But Friedman said those segments would not necessarily appear in that sequence each night on the program.

No anchors or staff members have yet been fixed for the series.

Tinker said it had not been decided yet whether Gannett’s broadcast arm or an outside company would syndicate the program.

None of the executives would say how much they thought the program would cost, but they agreed that it would run in the red initially.

GTG Entertainment is headed by the Los Angeles-based Tinker, who is in charge of developing evening entertainment programs for the TV networks, in particular CBS, which has contracted for first crack at GTG prime-time projects. Friedman, who resigned from NBC’s “Today” show June 5 and joined Tinker’s company a week later, will develop what he called “reality-based programs.”

Friedman said he believes that by the 1990s there will be a strong demand for such programs as alternatives to entertainment fare. He cited the usually high-rated celebrity-interview specials that Barbara Walters does for ABC as an example.