CBS Plans Extra Coverage of Bush’s State Visit to Japan

Correspondents and news anchors from the three major TV networks and CNN will be traveling to Japan next week to cover President Bush’s visit for the state funeral of Emperor Hirohito.

But CBS News is going its rivals one better for the outing, Bush’s first foreign trip as chief executive. The network will spend more than $2 million to originate much of its weekly news programming in Japan in what anchorman Dan Rather described Wednesday as “the most ambitious (news project) CBS has undertaken in peacetime.”

All next week, CBS plans to broadcast from Japan the “CBS Evening News” that Rather anchors and “CBS This Morning.” In addition, the prime-time news program “48 Hours,” also anchored by Rather, will air from there next Thursday, when the emperor’s funeral services begin.

Sunday’s “Sunday Morning” news magazine also will come from Tokyo, with “Face the Nation” originating the following Sunday from Beijing--the second of Bush’s three stops while in Asia.

ABC won’t be doing as much as CBS but, starting Monday, its “World News Tonight” will have Asian-segment anchoring and reporting by anchor Peter Jennings all week from Japan. He’ll also anchor the Asian segments during Bush’s stops in Beijing and South Korea.

Ted Koppel will stay home in Washington, although his “Nightline” will air reports from Bush’s trip, as will ABC’s “World News This Morning” and “This Week With David Brinkley.”

NBC, whose “NBC Nightly News” on Wednesday began a three-part series on Japan’s social, political and economic changes, has a somewhat more modest effort afoot. The network says Tom Brokaw will anchor his “Nightly News” from Tokyo next Thursday and Friday.

Brokaw also will anchor next weekend’s newscasts from China, and contribute reports for that weekend’s “Sunday Today.”

CNN, meanwhile, is dispatching anchors Bernard Shaw and Mary Alice Williams, plus three other correspondents. Its live telecasts of the funeral services for the emperor are slated to start at 5 p.m. PDT Thursday.

CBS’ Rather, Charles Kuralt of “Sunday Morning,” and Kathleen Sullivan and Harry Smith of “CBS This Morning,” are among 15 correspondents and at least 55 other staffers making the trip for CBS.

The number of CBS personnel could double with local hires of interpreters, pages, couriers and other support troops.

Why so many? Part of the reason is that CBS--saluted here Wednesday at a luncheon held by the Japan Society--is handling the American TV pool coverage for Bush’s trip, and would need a larger support staff anyway.

But another reason is that the Jan. 7 death of Japan’s 87-year-old Emperor “puts a period to the postwar era,” Rather said in an earlier interview in which he sounded the CBS expedition’s “what’s next?” theme--officially called “U.S.-Japan: Dawn of a New Era.”

In coming months, he said, a lot more of CBS’ reporting will be looking to Asia, the continuing Pacific Rim story, and what happens “in the new postwar era” in which Japan is an economic superpower.

“So we think the emperor’s funeral is a good starting point for bringing the audience’s attention, our own attention, to . . . what’s next” in American-Japanese relations, from financial to cultural, he added.

During a question-and-answer session at Wednesday’s lunch, he credited CBS News President David Burke as coming up with the idea for the special coverage and noted that it would cost $2 million “at the minimum.”

“It’s a gamble for us. . . . We have more chips on the table than our competitors,” he said. However, he added, if it works, “I think we will do this kind of thing in the future” in other areas of the world.

Next week’s coverage will have one unique aspect that is part of efforts by the Big Three networks to build overseas markets at at time when increased competition has reduced their audience at home.

Many Japanese television viewers will be able to see what CBS, ABC and CNN newscasts are reporting about their emperor’s funeral and their country.

Rather’s “Evening News” has been aired by the Tokyo Broadcasting System since October, 1987, usually at 5:30 a.m., with a dual audio channel providing versions in English and Japanese.

Some news reports from Jennings’ “World News Tonight”--but not the complete program--now also are shown in Japan. They are broadcast by the NHK network to homes equipped with satellite dishes that can receive the direct-to-home satellite signal aired by NHK, according to an NHK official here. He said NHK plans to start airing the full half-hour program later this year.

CNN’s newscasts are available in 50,000 hotel rooms in Toyko, on “several thousand” cable-equipped homes in Japan, and also on the Asahi television system in Tokyo, a CNN spokesman said.

NBC’s newscasts are not yet shown in Japan, a spokesman said.

“CBS Evening News” executive producer Tom Bettag, discussing broadcasts of Rather’s program in Japan, frankly admitted that “we are trying very hard to promote those (overseas) relationships.

“I think American television, and particularly American television news, is having a lot of impact internationally. . . . We’re shown in a hell of a lot of countries and have remarkably strong ratings.”