American Networks Seek Global Audience for U.S. TV Newscasts

Imagine watching TV in Paris, and Dan Rather comes on. You explain to your French friends that this is the “CBS Evening News,” “CBS Journal Televise du Soir. “

The friends might rightly be puzzled. It is 8 a.m. when Rather signs on.

Welcome to the expanding universe of global American network news by satellite. Although Cable News Network has been in it since 1982, the Big Three of American networks are just now getting involved.

Reasons cited by network officials for this move include reaching a potential audience of affluent, well-educated foreign viewers, many in the international business community; the easing of foreign restrictions on broadcasting; and, of course, the possibility of earning a few more dollars.

CBS and ABC newscasts, heretofore aired overseas only on the Armed Forces Network, began beaming abroad last year--ABC in Japan and CBS in Japan, France, Switzerland, Monaco and much of Italy.

Although officials at each network say these operations aren’t money-makers, they believe they have great potential for that.

NBC, now only satellite-sending its “NBC Nightly News” to a few Atlantic Ocean cruise ships, hasn’t yet plunged into the overseas news race, but will get into it, too, says NBC News president Larry Grossman.

Public TV already is in it. “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour” has signed for a year’s test run with Japan’s NHK broadcasting system.

NHK airs ABC’s “World News Tonight” and has broadcast excerpts of Cable News Network programs since 1982.

(CNN ventured into Europe in 1985 and says it now serves 61 countries, including 113 hotels in Western Europe and, in the London area, its half-hour “Headline News” broadcast.)

Why would foreign broadcasters want Rather or Peter Jennings or Tom Brokaw and their weeknight newscasts?

A basic reason, says ABC News senior vice president Richard C. Wald, is that “there is a broad cut of English-speaking population in the business and professional world outside the United States,” and that group, while not large, is “demographically desirable.”

Foreign broadcasters and advertisers alike, he says, want them as viewers, a point that gets agreement from Sam Roberts, a former CBS News foreign editor now running CBS’ efforts to send Rather & Co. broadcasts abroad.

Rather in France “is getting a very upscale audience, people who do business with the United States, plus travelers, obviously,” Roberts says.

That foreign broadcasters now are trying to import these 22-minute American newscasts is made possible by the easing of government control over broadcasters overseas, he says:

“Up until the past couple of years, television was controlled totally by government broadcasters. And in each of the countries (now getting American programs) they’ve opened it up to private broadcasting.

“And that’s where these guys are emerging, either in cable or limited facility broadcasting.”

And, he says, referring to Europe, “I think there’s an astonishingly ripe market developing over there.”

There is also the matter of language differences. But that is not proving a major problem, network executives say.

According to Roberts of CBS, “the astonishing thing to us” is a finding that a major segment of the French audience watching the “CBS Evening News” consists of “people who want to improve their English.”

“And if you go over there and talk to anybody who deals in international business, they all say the same thing, that English is the language of the future in Europe.”

For the present, foreign broadcasters air American newscasts in three ways:

--With spoken translations, as now is done in Japan for CBS’ newscast on one of two Tokyo channels that have aired the program since October. The other channel airs it in English.

--Without translations of any kind. That’s the way it is for the “CBS Evening News” in Italy, a spokeswoman says.

--With on-screen English subtitles. Such now is done in France for Rather on the Canal Plus system, which has aired his “Evening News” since March, and in Japan for ABC’s “World News Tonight” and “MacNeil/Lehrer.”

The last two air on NHK’s 24-hour Satellite TV Channel 1, a DBS-direct-broadcast-from-satellite-system that goes into homes equipped with a small receiver dish.

(Still in its infancy, the system system now accounts for under 5% of the Japanese home viewing market, says Wald, but TV executives there “have expectations of hitting about 25% a year or two from now.”

(According to A. C. Nielsen Co. estimates, Japan has nearly 36.8 million homes with TV, compared with 88.6 million in the United States.)

There are also differences in the matter of commercials that air overseas in the CBS and ABC newscasts.

“World News Tonight” retains its American commercials, although ABC is considering proposals to let them be replaced in Japan with local advertising.

The “CBS Evening News,” on the other hand, is sponsored in Europe and Japan with a different set of commercials, many of which are aimed at the international business market.

The “MacNeil/Lehrer” program, aired in the United States without commercials, is being broadcast the same way in Japan.

ABC’s Wald believes that some day one or all of the American networks could produce a video cousin of the Paris-based, English-language International Herald Tribune.

“But I don’t think that’s as valuable,” he says. “Because the Europeans and NHK already have a lot of news on the air . . . they get our news through several international syndication services.”

(One is Worldwide Television News, in which ABC has a 42% interest. Such is the nature of international TV news that CBS News recently signed with WTN to provide footage and reportage of overseas stories.)

Foreign newscasts have access to American and other news stories through their own reporters or electronic news syndication services. But foreign broadcasters, Wald explains, are interested in what “World News Tonight” and its American rivals are reporting to American viewers each weeknight.

“They want to see how we play it, because they (foreign viewers) want to understand how Americans see world events.”