In The Eye of the Storm : Network News: Prospects for Its Future--if Any

Would it really be a loss if network news disappeared? Some people think it wouldn’t. To them, the phrase broadcast journalism , especially the network kind, is a galloping oxymoron. Whatever it may be, they insist, it isn’t journalism, and the nation would be better off without it.

Having toiled most pleasantly in the network news vineyards for 20 years, I’m biased: I don’t agree with these critics. I think that network news has been, and is, quite good. I think that it has made important contributions to our society. I’d hate to see it go.

Admittedly, there are some things I don’t like about network news:

--I don’t like the fact that the network evening news is only 22 minutes. That’s too short to do justice to the news of this teeming and fragile world.

--I don’t like network journalism’s unreasoning fear of talking heads. “60 Minutes” and the interview series on the networks are notable exceptions. I believe that a talking head with something to say is fascinating--and newsworthy.

--I don’t like the tendency--much more common a year ago than it is now--of the network evening news broadcasts to include titillating trivia at the expense of important substance. For example, I cringed when my beloved “CBS Evening News” a few months ago spent precious minutes on the Joan Collins divorce case. The network evening news shouldn’t compete with the reading material at the checkout counter.

--I don’t like music at the beginning, at the end and in the midst of network evening news broadcasts. It’s a matter of principle: The music is a fiction, a part of entertainment and not of journalism.

--I don’t like the almost daily inclusion in the morning broadcasts produced by the network news divisions (such as NBC’s “Today” show and CBS’ “This Morning”) of segments plugging sports, entertainment and news shows scheduled to appear on the same network. It can’t be simply news judgment: Are only the shows on the particular network newsworthy while those on competing networks almost never are? Inclusion in any news broadcast of material that has not earned its way on through honest news judgments threatens the most precious thing a news organization has--its credibility.

--I don’t like the virtual disappearance of serious, single-issue documentaries and of preemptive instant prime-time specials to provide summaries, highlights and analysis of major news events.

--I don’t like network news’ tendency--less today on the evening news but still conspicuous in respect to some documentary and magazine series--of aiming at the senses, the emotions, the feelings, rather than aiming for the mind.

But my list of dislikes may only be cavils about details, or matters of subjective taste, or the result of my own nostalgia, which mistakenly rejects practices different from mine. Whatever the validity of my dislikes, even the total combination of these flaws--if that is what they are--is overwhelmingly outweighed by what’s good and valuable about network news.

It’s true that compared to the New York Times, the network evening news is something of a headline service, but that’s true of a lot of other journalistic enterprises too. And the half-hour that a viewer spends on the network evening news probably is a good deal more than the average newspaper reader spends on national and international news.

On its best days, the evening news is brilliant; on its good days, which are much more common than its bad days, it is surprisingly informative. Over the years, it has evolved into a unique art form of journalism. Because of its special nature--if viewers want to see the next story, they have to watch the one then on, even though they may not be interested in it--viewers are introduced to, and may become interested enough in a story or an issue that, because of the a la carte nature of print, they have skipped in a newspaper.

On balance, then, network journalism does serve a societal purpose in a nation with a form of government whose viability depends on the availability of information on the basis of which its citizens can make their judgments and choose their governors.

Moreover, over-the-air network news reaches all the people, while even today, cable reaches only half of them and can never have the all-inclusive reach of broadcast news. Only network news provides to everybody the common data base needed by a democracy and its citizens.

If I am right about the societal value of network news with all its imperfections, then the question of its future is important.

And that has been cast in doubt not only by the multiple whammies of declining network ratings, shares and profits, increased network news costs and decreasing network news audiences, but also by other major developments.

One such development is the local affiliated stations’ decreasing reliance on network news broadcasts to provide national and international news.

Uplink satellite dishes on mobile trucks have made it possible for stations to assign their own personnel to cover stories remote from the station. And there has been a proliferation of non-network sources providing national and international news to local stations: regional consortiums, CNN Newsource, Group W Newsfeed Network NIWS and a number of syndicated services.

Paradoxically, an additional source for non-local news is the closed-circuit feeds to their affiliates by the network news organizations themselves. Originally limited to a single short afternoon feed of material that the network evening news had decided it did not need, this service has been greatly expanded by the networks in response to affiliate pressures: ABC News is said to close-circuit almost all its stories to its affiliates.

A second new major factor that will influence--one way or another--the future of network news is the changing of the guard. Within the last few years, new managers/proprietors have taken over the networks. And they are a new breed.

When I was at CBS News, the managers or proprietors, or both, of CBS were men whose whole adult life had been devoted to broadcasting. CBS founder Bill Paley invented network news; it was his pride and--usually--his joy. CBS President Emeritus Frank Stanton nurtured the invention. They loved broadcast news; the news division was spoiled.

I don’t know these new men, so I can’t know what baggage they bring as they face the excruciatingly difficult decisions that they will have to make about network news. When, during the first days of Laurence A. Tisch, the new CEO at CBS, the news division had to cut $30 million out of its budget and more than 100 people from its staff--far more, proportionately, it seemed, than the other CBS divisions had to cut--I was pessimistic indeed about the survival of CBS News.

But since then, Tisch has stated publicly that he does not insist that the news division be a profit center, and that news was still CBS’ crown jewel. And he appears to have put his money where his mouth is. He has added two weekly prime-time CBS News Division series to the television network schedule (“West 57th” and “48 Hours”), joining with “60 Minutes.” Never in my most insistent Oliver Twist days of cajoling for more time on the air did I ever have the nerve to suggest the three prime-time hours a week of the network schedule that CBS News now occupies. And Tisch has returned the two morning hours each weekday to the news division.

It wouldn’t necessarily follow, however, that the future of network news at CBS is assured no matter how much senior management may love it. The harsh new realities that networks and network news now face may be so overwhelming that not even Paley and Stanton, with their obligations to the company’s stockholders, would have been able to avoid belt-tightening--or even euthanasia--for network news.

It is a truism that good journalism can survive only if it is economically viable.

Whatever the new approaches that may give greater assurance of a future for network news, it will hardly surprise anyone that I, who spent a considerable part of my 16 years as head of a network news division pushing for an expanded news-gathering staff and a larger budget, do not believe that more budget cutting and more news staff reduction is the way to go. Destroying network hard news is not the way to save it.

I believe that the current number of reporters at CBS News, for example--only about 90--is dangerously small if network news is to be an effective and useful service. Cutting budget and news-gathering staff must be a last resort, not a first reaction.

Senior management might well study the histories of the New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune, which at different times some years ago were having economic difficulties. The Trib had become one of the most interesting and best-written newspapers in the land. But its proprietor understandably felt he could not sink any more money into it. The Times proprietors, on the other hand, when their paper was struggling, plowed everything they had into improving the paper and expanding its coverage. The Trib went under. The Times, of course, is enormously successful, both journalistically and as a business enterprise.

It’s possible that there’s a lesson there.