ABC’s Jennings: Cronkite of the ‘90s? : Television: Broadcasters wonder whether ABC anchor will be able to turn a winning streak into a long-running standard.

In the 1960s, “Good night, Chet,” “Good night, David” was an instantly recognizable TV sign-off. The pairing of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley as co-anchors on “The Huntley-Brinkley Report” gave NBC the predominant newscast for a decade--and, according to a survey at the time, made the two newscasters better known than Cary Grant, James Stewart or the Beatles.

In the 1970s, it was Walter Cronkite’s turn. On the “CBS Evening News,” Cronkite was such a popular figure that he was not simply the No. 1 anchor--he was “the most trusted man in America.”

The network newscasts were a nightly national seance where Americans came together over TV tray tables to watch the dramatic stories of the day. There was no Cable News Network or two-hour local newscasts. ABC, founded after the other two broadcast networks, was considered an upstart operation.

Today, the three broadcast newscasts are locked in a tightly contested ratings race, and ABC’s “World News Tonight” with Peter Jennings is on a winning streak. With increased news options and changing viewer habits, the day may be gone when a single anchor could hold sway over a worshipful era. But the recent change in the ratings has broadcasters wondering whether Jennings and ABC will be able to turn their winning streak into a long-running standard.

Over the past 10 weeks, “World News Tonight” has edged out “The CBS Evening News With Dan Rather” as the top-rated program in the Nielsen ratings, with “NBC Nightly News With Tom Brokaw” a close third. While the lead has occasionally changed hands in recent years, CBS has most often led in the ratings.

In the most recent ratings, “World News Tonight” had an 11.2 rating and 21% of the available audience, “The CBS Evening News” had a 10.2 rating and a 19% share of the audience, and NBC had a 9.9 rating and 18% share. Each rating point represents 921,000 homes.

Despite the closeness of the competition, even the small ratings-point difference can mean millions of dollars in advertising revenue--and prestige for all of the network’s news programs.

For Jennings, who had a brief stint as a 26-year-old network anchor in 1965 in an ill-conceived move by ABC to counter the competition with Jennings’ youth and good looks, the recent surge in the ratings may indicate growing popularity for his urbane approach and interest in foreign news.

“Maybe it’s my Protestant upbringing, but I think it’s hypocritical for me to boast about ratings after saying we shouldn’t be judged by ratings when we were No. 3,” Jennings says. “Still, when you have a week such as the one where we were in Prague, Rome and Malta, and you think you’ve seen people tuning in to the network for a particular occasion, that pleases me for all of us.”

“Being No. 1 in news takes the right combination of anchor and broadcast,” says one veteran news executive. “Jennings is a very good anchor who projects an image of knowledge and authority. At the same time, ABC has quietly put together a list of correspondents who offer the kind of analysis that distinguishes network news from local stations.”

In a recent Times-Mirror poll of public attitudes toward the media, Jennings was rated the most believable among the network anchors.

ABC’s move ahead comes at a time of major breaking stories, from the Bay Area earthquake to the avalanche of change in Eastern Europe.

In the new era of globe-trotting anchors, Rather, Jennings and Brokaw all provided extensive, live coverage of recent events abroad, from the Berlin Wall to the summit in Malta. Canadian-born Jennings--who worked for many years abroad for ABC as a foreign correspondent--previously had emphasized foreign news on his newscast, and ABC researchers say viewers identify him with the subject.

“We do periodic studies of people who watch the evening news, and Jennings is seen as particularly strong in that area,” says Alan Wurtzel, senior vice president in charge of marketing research services for ABC.

Although ABC has a ways to go before matching the 204-week winning streak of the “CBS Evening News” with Dan Rather, ABC researchers see promising trends in the recent demographics.

(Ironically, since NBC is able to charge advertisers more for the younger profile of “Nightly News” viewers, according to network sources, NBC is said to have less reason for concern than CBS, even though NBC “Nightly News” comes in third in the overall ratings. “World News Tonight,” according to sources, has been able to charge more for its ads than NBC because of its strength in urban markets. By contrast, the audience for CBS--and the “CBS Evening News”--traditionally has shown strength among older viewers.)

“In the past weeks, we’ve increased our audience of viewers aged 50-plus by 5%,” says Wurtzel of ABC. “Those are the core news-watchers, and they’re hard to wrench away.”

What effect, if any, is ABC’s recent move ahead having at the other two networks? Noting that other factors, such as the performance of local stations carrying the CBS newscast may be having an effect on the ratings of “The CBS Evening News,” executive producer Tom Bettag says: “It’s too early to make any conclusions about where this is coming from. Dan (Rather) has been the No. 1 anchor for many years, and we feel that we’ve had one of our best years in terms of our news coverage. We’ve made some changes this year--for example, having Dan stand to do the news--and we’re not planning any other changes at this moment.”

“Any time your newscast drops from No. 1, there’s concern,” says another CBS source, who notes that CBS’s third-place performance in prime-time also may be hurting “CBS Evening News,” while ABC is showing improvement against first-place NBC in prime time. “No edicts have been issued to producers, but there are meetings going on to review all of the elements of the newscast.”

CBS has built its newscast around Rather, says one news executive. “Yet in many ways he is the least comfortable among the anchors with the ‘performance’ part of the job.”

Rather’s intense demeanor may work against him in the “cool” medium of TV, which contradictingly requires that the anchor be a good reporter and also a calm figure giving viewers the news. Incidents such as Rather’s 1988 interview with presidential candidate George Bush may cost him some popularity among viewers.

In recent years, network news divisions have experienced staff cutbacks, and “World News Tonight” may have benefited from the fact that ABC News has been able to create several successful new series, from “Nightline” to “This Week With David Brinkley.” David Poltrack, senior vice president in charge of planning and research for CBS, theorizes that the ratings surge began with ABC’s coverage of the Oct. 17 Bay Area earthquake, when ABC, with its baseball announcers broadcasting the World Series live from Candlestick Park, got the jump on the coverage and continued with Ted Koppel for many hours throughout the night.

“I think they’ve benefited from the combination of ‘Nightline’ and ‘World News Tonight,’ ” he said, “and the blip we’re seeing now can be traced to the earthquake, where ABC initially seemed to own that story. Some NBC or CBS viewers who were watching the World Series and suddenly saw the earthquake coverage ended up sampling ABC News, and a few of them may have become regular viewers.”

“NBC Nightly News” in recent months experimented with its mix of stories, re-editing broadcasts to elongate some stories and shorten others, experiments that executive producer Bill Wheatley characterized as “fine-tuning,” not planned major changes.

“Nightly News” was criticized earlier this year for its lateness in getting on the air with coverage of the San Francisco earthquake. (NBC News officials originally attributed the difficulties to problems with equipment at its local affiliates, but later NBC accepted some of the blame.) But morale improved when Brokaw later was the first to broadcast live from Berlin as the Wall was coming down.

NBC also has lost some “name” correspondents to the other networks, and the news division has not created a successful prime-time magazine news show, although hopes are high for the upcoming prime-time magazine show being created for Jane Pauley.

Josephine Holtz, the director of news-audience research for NBC, also maintains that ABC has benefited from having the Oprah Winfrey talk show as a lead-in to the local news on many stations affiliated with ABC. According to a study done by NBC, she says, stations that have Oprah Winfrey as the lead-in to their local news have a greater chance of having the top-rated local news, which then benefits the network newscast. The program that precedes the evening newscast, Holtz contends, is more important than what follows it.

“Our research indicates that Tom Brokaw is popular and respected by viewers,” said Holtz. “We feel confident about the program.”

All of this talk of personal popularity and dissecting ratings makes many newscasters uncomfortable, and they say that they don’t use audience polls to determine the news.

“I never read the research,” says Paul Friedman, executive producer of “World News Tonight.” “That’s not my job.”

Friedman says that he has been encouraged by viewers’ letters and phone calls in response to “American Agenda,” longer segments on issues such as child-care and the environment. All three evening newscasts have longer-format sections, which seek to give more depth to issues and are seen as a way to differentiate the evening-news programs from local news.

But, Friedman said, those segments came not out of research but journalistic instinct, the oldest research tool in the book.

“The ratings differences among us are minor,” says “NBC Nightly News” senior producer Cheryl Gould. “All of this attention to the news ratings trivializes the seriousness of what we’re trying to do.”

Yet the news Nielsens land on TV news executives’ desks every week. And for better or worse, they are one yardstick of success in the larger world of broadcasting.