CNN: Redefining News and Itself

It’s no accident that in television news, the biggest names get the biggest paychecks--the common wisdom being that entertainment shows aren’t the only ones where stars drive Nielsens.

No wonder, then, that CNN this year made aggressive runs at two of TV anchordom’s richly paid big three--Tom Brokaw of NBC and Dan Rather of CBS--before each signed again with his respective network and reportedly joined ABC’s Peter Jennings in the $7-million-a-year club.

Rather told CNN’s inquiring Larry King Wednesday night that he came “real close” to relocating to CNN, deciding against it only after being persuaded by his present network that his “best destiny” was at CBS.

If that was meant to include best exposure, the advice was surely on the mark. Rather said he was still “all eyes and ears” regarding doing special projects for CNN while remaining at CBS, but that there was no movement on that front.

Wearing identical blue shirts and black suspenders, Rather and King faced each other amiably on King’s CNN show, which in the east was airing opposite the wobbly, infant CBS newsmagazine series “Public Eye With Bryant Gumbel.” Thus, a joshing Rather told King that his own boss, CBS News President Andrew Hayward, “is on me like a raven on a road kill” for abetting Gumbel’s competition.

Not much competition, though--Country Dan’s folk-whimsy notwithstanding--for, like the rest of CNN, the size of King’s audience rarely equals the publicity he generates.

If Brokaw or Rather had switched to CNN, it’s unlikely either alone would have had a major, direct impact on the quality of that relatively young network’s news-gathering efforts. By virtue of his celebrity, though, a Brokaw or Rather would have drawn some additional viewers and been a Bethlehem Star lighting a trail across the sands for others from the big three networks to follow to CNN.

Even without that happening, however, one of their wise men has found his way there on his own.

Snagging respected, moderately well-known Jeff Greenfield from ABC News this month may do nothing at all for CNN’s ratings, which are always subject to what’s hot at the moment. O.J. Simpson? Hot. Princess Diana? Hot. Marv Albert? Hot. Wars? Hot. Most days, though, are cool to lukewarm for CNN.

Yet hiring Greenfield, long a Renaissance man of network news, is bound to make CNN better, and affirms new boss Rick Kaplan’s strategy for re-energizing the 24-hour news network, now nervously looking back over its shoulder at hungry new cable competitors (MSNBC and the Fox News Network) while advancing unsteadily toward a new millennium.

Kaplan, the new president of domestic CNN, previously did a long stint at ABC News, guiding such programs as “Nightline,” “PrimeTime Live” and “World News Tonight.” Accordingly, he recently also hired ABC’s first-rate London correspondent, Linda Patillo, who is bound to enhance CNN’s uneven foreign reporting. And Kaplan bagged veteran “20/20” correspondent Judd Rose along with Greenfield.

It’s the addition of Greenfield that’s most significant, though, bringing on board not just someone who is experienced (he earlier worked at CBS News) and versatile (still earlier working as a political consultant), but a blue chipper who showed repeatedly on “Nightline” and “World News Tonight” that he has no peer among TV journalists when it comes to sizing up politics and the media, and the way they interconnect. He’s observed both universes from inside.

Greenfield will have much less exposure but a wider palette at CNN, apparently. As witty and articulate as he is astute, he has the skills to head his own show and is able to process information swiftly, a crucial trait for work in front of the live camera. He told the show-biz paper Variety recently that, in addition to other tasks at CNN, he eventually will be hosting or co-hosting a new weekly magazine series and filling in for King from time to time.

*

You wonder about Greenfield reconciling his own news priorities with some of the shrill, sensationalistic ones demonstrated by CNN in the 1990s. The even bigger hoot would have been observing Rather face that as a CNN star, given how fervently and self-righteously he recites the mantra of “hard news” in publicly contrasting “The CBS Evening News,” on which he is anchor and managing editor, with the nightly newscasts of NBC and ABC.

An admiring King asked Rather Wednesday, disciple to guru, about a story that CNN embraced in a crunching full nelson and never let go: “Was Marv Albert a news story?”

Rather paused, mentally stroking his chin before replying. “Of course, he was a news story. But he wasn’t a big news story for me or for our broadcast.”

King asked about another item that CNN joined much of the media in blanketing, one that bequeathed the White House just the kind of cuddly good press it sought: “The president gets a dog. What kinda story?”

“Not much,” Rather answered without hesitation.

Later he correctly defined two sides of a debate that has gone on in mainstream newsrooms almost since the inception of modern journalism, that of giving the people “what you think they need to know” versus giving them “what you think they want to know.” Some of both is the way to go, of course, even though CNN in recent years has tilted emphatically toward the latter.

How would CNN have approached the presidential dog story even had “hard news” Rather been on the scene to argue for restraint? CNN inevitably being CNN, you can guess.

Like a raven on a road kill.