What Sets the Network News Apart

More than revolution is on display in television’s coverage of the political turbulence in China. Network anchors are on display.

Even as the ratings tell us that public demand for network news seems to be shrinking, the demands on network news anchors seem to be growing. And so is the gap separating them and local anchors.

Star charisma--the undefinable quality that attracts viewers to the tent--remains a prerequisite for both positions. And Quasimodo need not apply, whether the anchor job is for Peoria or NBC. In other ways, however, the requirements of the local anchor and the network anchor are as distinctly different as apples and oranges.

The China coverage has affirmed that.

Although a rare local anchor may be a crackerjack journalist, the opportunity to demonstrate those skills rarely comes up. Instead, the gifts of gab, charm and TelePrompTer reading are usually all that matter. Those are skills separate from the additional journalistic ones required of network anchors, especially in an era when satellites have narrowed the distance, for example, between New York and Beijing.

Witness when CBS sent Dan Rather and CNN sent Bernard Shaw to Beijing for live coverage of the recent Sino-Soviet summit amid volatile political upheaval in which the control of all China is at stake.

One can debate the relative merits of both men as reporters (Rather spent years as a CBS correspondent, and Shaw is a former ABC correspondent). But beyond argument is that both went to Beijing as journalists, and were required there to be journalists, not merely news narrators and front men for their newscasts.

There was Rather interviewing students in Tian An Men Square, and later maneuvering to stay on the air despite a Chinese government order to end live satellite transmission from Beijing. And there on the same day was Shaw reporting on the gathering storm while literally counting down CNN’s remaining minutes on the air from Beijing. Later, after the plug had been pulled, there was Shaw again, providing audio updates.

It didn’t end there, of course. Back in New York, Rather has continued helping shape the CBS coverage and has been conversing on the air live with CBS correspondents still in Beijing.

ABC’s Peter Jennings and NBC’s Tom Brokaw have been doing the same with their own people in Beijing. Both of them have also logged many miles on many stories as correspondents and as anchors. Jennings, along with Rather and Shaw, is accompanying President Bush on his trip to Europe in connection with NATO. (NBC said that Brokaw’s plans for the Bush trip were undecided.)

In contrast to the network news farces so comically defined in “Broadcast News,” big, breaking stories require a journalist in front of the camera, not a news puppet orchestrated by an unseen producer in the control room.

Still, having celebrity journalists at the anchor desk, instead of just celebrities, doesn’t necessarily ensure first-rate coverage in a medium so tied to pictures and personalities that the form and the story sometimes merge and the messenger sometimes eclipses the message.

Nor does it ensure the survival of network news as we now know it--not in an age when TV news as an entity is undergoing redefinition.

Our problems as a global society are growing more complex. Yet a proliferation of ersatz news programs seem to have had a telling impact on journalistic coverage by creating as well as feeding appetites for shallowness and brevity. TV may have shaped its own devouring monster--the typical viewer--who not only seems to want news fluff, but now wants it in a microwave.

Not only does local news seem more able and willing to shift with these icy winds, but stations now have, through satellite technology, the potential to provide much of the long-distance coverage traditionally provided by networks news.

Meanwhile, network newscasts, even though pathetically skimpy, are increasingly looking and smelling like musty dinosaurs whose future is uncertain. In light of their diminishing returns, the network news divisions themselves are under reappraisal in some quarters. One gloomy thought is that their role may fade until they become, in effect, supplementary electronic news services for their affiliates, a la CNN’s relationship with many independent stations.

In other words, no more nightly network newscasts. Instead, network affiliates would have another half-hour to fill with more game shows, travel shows, tabloid shows and ersatz news shows.

In terms of upheaval, all of this may not be such a long way from Tian An Men Square.

There’s revolution in the air, not only in China but on America’s airwaves.