News From NBC: It’s Not the Same Network

It’s hard to imagine that once upon a time NBC regularly turned to journalists to run the network.

The entire network.

Can this be the same NBC that now is closing news bureaus and losing key news personnel under the management of General Electric, its owner since 1986?

In truth, it’s not the same NBC.

It’s not the NBC that made the late Robert Kintner, a one-time reporter for the old New York Herald Tribune, president of the network. It’s not the NBC that made Robert Mulholland, formerly of the news division, president of the network. It’s not the NBC that made Julian Goodman, also formerly of the news division, president of the network and, eventually, chairman.

It’s not the same NBC.

On Monday, the virtual disappearance of the team that made NBC No. 1 in recent years will become a hard fact when Brandon Tartikoff, head of the entertainment division, officially departs to run Paramount Pictures. He is getting out just under the wire as GE’s tightfisted management is clamping more controls on the network.

Grant Tinker was no fool when he left as NBC chairman following GE’s purchase of the broadcast organization.

Other significant figures long associated with NBC success have, for various reasons, either already left or plan to leave the top-rated but slipping network:

Johnny Carson has announced he will retire next May.

Bill Cosby, his historic sitcom sliding in the ratings, may well end the show after next season.

Steven Bochco, who co-created “Hill Street Blues” and “L.A. Law” for NBC, has moved to ABC.

But nowhere is the changing face of NBC more evident than in the fading glory of the news department that once was a symbol of network grandeur epitomized by the anchor team of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley.

True, CBS News has had its own public bloodletting even though the president of the network’s Broadcast Group, Howard Stringer, is a former newsman.

And ABC News announced the other day that it is dropping its 15-minute Saturday and Sunday night wrap-ups, and, according to reports on Friday, it may also impose new cutbacks as cable TV competition, the cost of Gulf War coverage and the recession take their toll.

But in recent weeks, the quiet, painful internal struggles at NBC have become highly visible in a steady stream of revealing developments.

Mary Alice Williams, a top-flight NBC anchor, was reportedly disenchanted with the network and talking with CNN, her former employer, about returning to the cable service.

David Browning, one of the finest producers in TV news, left NBC when his prime-time series, “Real Life With Jane Pauley,” was turned over to Steve Friedman, whose main job for the network is producing Tom Brokaw’s “Nightly News.”

One would think that Friedman would have enough of a chore turning around the Brokaw news, which remains an also-ran to ABC in the ratings competition and is the key to any real resurgence by NBC News. But now Friedman will be doing double duty for NBC--and GE.

NBC News was just getting over the double fiasco of Pauley being forced off the “Today” series and the failure of her replacement, Deborah Norville who left with a reported $4 million payoff--when the latest round of bad news hit the network.

There were layoffs in NBC’s Boston news bureau, on top of the past closing of bureaus in San Francisco and Frankfurt, as well as a cutback in the network’s Johannesburg operation.

NBC now lists Barcelona as a bureau, but a spokeswoman concedes that this is only until after the network completes its coverage of the Olympic Games there next year.

The spokeswoman says NBC has a “presence” rather than a bureau in Warsaw, indicating it can arrange coverage.

“There’s really nobody now in Central Europe,” says an NBC News source. “We have a Rome bureau, but that’s a long way away.”

Several NBC staffers say they have heard rumors that the Miami bureau might be another casualty, and speak ominously of the “dismantling” of NBC News. Others speak of the possibility that more of NBC’s news coverage might be shifted to the network’s information-oriented cable channel, CNBC.

Whether this is unwarranted pessimism remains to be seen, but there is little doubt that more cutbacks are coming, as they are at CBS and ABC as well.

“A year ago,” says an NBC source, “the network promised no more cuts. But then the costs of the Gulf War gave them an excuse to cut some more.”

In any case, the NBC News of today is a far cry from its heyday. Instead of stylish prime-time series such as “David Brinkley’s Journal” and “Chet Huntley Reporting,” there are undistinguished entries like the Pauley show and “Expose.”

The lowered status of NBC News was indicated when the head of the division, Michael Gartner, was named only a member of a program development group headed by Tartikoff, the boss of entertainment.

Under Kintner, who was president of NBC until 1966, the news division supplied a whopping 25% or more of the network’s schedule, employed 800 full-time staffers and spent $60 million a year. He frequently preempted profitable, prime-time entertainment shows for special news reports. The network’s reputation soared, with the Huntley-Brinkley evening news as its symbol.

Gartner’s predecessor as president of NBC News, Lawrence Grossman, chafed under the GE-appointed network president, Robert Wright, and finally quit in 1988, differing over how news cuts should be made. He refused to do a hypothetical 5% cut of the NBC News budget as an “exercise,” although he eventually trimmed his staff.

A powerful stockholder says quiet cutbacks have been going on at NBC ever since GE took over five years ago.

In a recent interview, former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite warned that the continuing staff reductions were “cutting into the bone of the support system” of network newscasts.

More than that, the networks are cutting their throats. It is news, not entertainment, that defines a network’s image. And without a definable news image, a network is just a collection of shows--like any other TV channel. And you can kiss it goodby.

The way things look--goodby.