Koppel: No Special Show on Khomeini

Although it was the 1979 Iran hostage crisis that gave birth to ABC’s “Nightline,” the late-night news series plans to handle the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini like any other news story, anchor Ted Koppel said Sunday.

“I’m not sure we’ll do anything on the death of the Ayatollah (on tonight’s ‘Nightline’),” Koppel said in a telephone interview. “By then, he’ll be dead for 48 hours or so--we’re not sure exactly when he died. The China story is a much bigger story right now.”

“Nightline” news staffers do not make decisions on news coverage until the morning before the telecast, Koppel said, but he did not expect tonight’s broadcast to focus on the Ayatollah’s death. “We wouldn’t do a special program on it just because that was the evolution of ‘Nightline,’ ” he said. “The real story (in the Ayatollah’s death) is what will happen in the political power struggle in Iran following his death.”

Nonetheless, Koppel readily acknowledged that Khomeini was in a sense responsible for the birth of “Nightline” in 1980--as well as catapulting the ABC newsman to fame as its anchor.

Late in 1979, ABC began airing a nightly 11:30 p.m. news report entitled “The Iran Crisis: America Held Hostage,” anchored by Frank Reynolds, which updated developments in the story of the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Three weeks after the bulletins began, Reynolds took a night off to celebrate his birthday; Koppel, ABC’s diplomatic correspondent, was tapped to fill in as anchor.

When the show was renamed “Nightline” in March of 1980, Koppel became the anchor.

Koppel recalled Sunday that at first, coming up with a nightly report on the hostage situation was an easy job. He described those early broadcasts as “fairly standard, traditional network news specials,” made especially dramatic because of Iran’s enthusiasm for coverage.

“There was clearly an awareness on the part of the Iranian government that TV was an important tool,” Koppel said. “They really believed that . . . by carrying on their morality play before the cameras they were really going to convince the American people to revolt against their own democratic government. It was just evidence of how critically they misjudged the American people.”

ABC also benefitted by the fact that one of its radio correspondents, Bob Dyke, happened to be in Tehran from Day One of the hostage crisis.

“He had the whole field to himself,” Koppel said. “He was immediately promoted to TV correspondent--or degraded, depending on your perspective. It was the high point of his career.”

Covering the hostage crisis became more difficult after Iran began denying access to American journalists, Koppel said. He added that Jimmy Carter’s White House, at first eager to exploit Carter’s commitment to solving the hostage crisis, later clammed up when it became clear that Carter’s efforts to end the crisis were proving ineffectual.

“One day, six or seven weeks into the crisis, nothing was happening,” Koppel said. “We had nothing to put on that night. But (ABC News President) Roone Arledge said that the show had to go on the air at 11:30.”

Because they could not get access to anyone in Tehran, Koppel’s team went to the Iranian embassy in Washington and asked the charge d’affaires to appear on the show. The official agreed, but said he was afraid to leave the Embassy for fear of being arrested by the American police.

The news team obliged by having Koppel speak to the Iranian official in the Embassy from the ABC studio. This was done by setting up an apparatus known as a chroma key screen that enabled the official’s face to appear on a screen in the studio, a technique the show relies on today.

After that, Koppel said, “We decided, ‘If we can talk to someone across town, we can talk to someone across they country.’ From that, we evolved the basic format for ‘Nightline.’ Although we were not the first to use a chroma key screen, what we began doing was to have the guests interacting not only with the anchor, but with one another. It became possible for us to have discussions between people who were thousands of miles apart.”