Will Next Anchors Be News Stars or Dinosaurs?

One ABC correspondent is described by a colleague as wanting the nightly news anchor job “so bad he can taste it.” Others dismiss it as an increasingly anachronistic position that will soon die off with its older viewers. “It seems to be a dying, decreasing institution,” says former NBC News President Larry Grossman.

The nightly news anchors may still be the 800-pound gorillas that they were a decade ago--their programs, after all, draw a combined 30 million viewers a night--but their successors could be another matter. There may never be a next generation that has the same stature and clout as Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw--but that hasn’t stopped fierce jockeying for their jobs when the men retire.

Seen in retrospect, there have been two key moments in network news in the last two decades. The year 1980 was one: ABC turned its late-night reports on the Iranian hostage crisis into the in-depth news program “Nightline,” Turner Broadcasting founded the all-news cable network CNN, and Dan Rather was named to replace Walter Cronkite in the anchor chair at CBS (he started March 9, 1981).

The other key moment came in 1983. On the same day, Sept. 5, Brokaw took the anchor chair solo at NBC, Peter Jennings got sole custody of ABC’s “World News Tonight” and public broadcasting launched the nation’s first one-hour newscast, “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.”

Today, all and nothing has changed. Rather, Jennings and Brokaw still sit in the same seats, as does Jim Lehrer (Robert MacNeil has retired), constituting an amazingly stable roster at the center of the television news landscape. “It’s some measure of the talent of Tom, Dan and Peter that they are still there,” having adapted to the changing nature of the game in the last decade, says Brian Williams, anchor of MSNBC’s flagship 9 p.m. newscast and the heir apparent at NBC News.

But all around them, the scenery has swirled, as “Nightline” and CNN set in motion revolutions. “Nightline” showed that “boutique” news programs could have nearly as much impact as the evening news. CNN paved the way for three 24-hour cable news networks, with the launch of MSNBC and Fox News Channel in 1996. Along with the Internet, “Nightline” and cable news networks have lessened the impact of an early-evening newscast dedicated to the headlines of the day. PBS is considering launching an 11 p.m. newscast, a national broadcast that would also include local headlines and weather and that could draw more viewers away from the traditional outlets.

“The job has gone from civics lesson to relevance instructor,” says Williams, “from obscure hearings on the Hill to trends people can take away from the broadcast.” He calls it “a value-added broadcast,” using a marketing phrase that would be anathema to many old-timers.

It’s also a broadcast he has aspired to work on since he was a boy, he says, and despite its changing relevance, he still wants to be there. “It will always speak with the authority of that opening shot; it’s the epicenter of the news world.”

“There is still a remarkably large number of Americans who watch in toto the three [networks’] newscasts,” says Bill Wheatley, NBC’s executive vice president, adding that the audience has “declined at a slower rate than that of network television in general.” And, he notes, there’s a baby boomer “bulge coming in the population of people who may have more time to watch evening news programs.”

Others are less sure. As the audience continues to erode, “there’s a real question [of] whether it has any future,” says Grossman, author of “The Electronic Republic: Reshaping Democracy in the Information Age.”

“I’d get out of the starched-shirt business,” says Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes. “There’s going to be less and less of that.”

In the future, he says, “whoever can get the story to the screen with the best and most accurate information told by a personality who pops through the screen will really control the news.” But he adds, “The extra step of going through an anchor and big set will probably be eliminated over time.”

The very dominance of the anchors may ultimately hurt the programs. “I think that there will be an evaluation of the format by whatever network goes first [in changing anchors],” says CBS News President Andrew Heyward.

“The three men who do the news now are so closely identified with the broadcasts . . . it’s not entirely clear what the succession will be like,” he says. “I’m not saying in a dire way that the news is going to disappear, but any time one of the three decides to step down, I think that network will have to look at the broadcast itself, because the very format is tied up with the notion of a highly respected broadcaster” giving the days’ news.

Moreover, he says, “with these guys in place so long, by definition it will be hard for a successor to emerge.” Certainly, he says, the changes that have rocked the business have made it impossible for an anchor to come up in the same way. “Dan has literally covered every major national and international story since the Kennedy assassination, and arguably established a reputation as the leading television reporter of his generation.”

But today, with the proliferation of outlets, he says, “it’s harder for a single figure to emerge as a reporting giant.” The importance of prime-time newsmagazines has siphoned away some reporters such as Scott Pelley from the hard news track, he adds.

ABC says it has identified potential future anchors but isn’t pegging them for specific shows. “We focus more on skills rather than programs, because we’re not smart enough to know what the next generation of programs will look like,” says Amy Entelis, senior vice president, talent recruitment. “We’re prepared for a lot of eventualities.”

Even if the news takes a different form, personalities are still expected to count. “As CNN has learned, you do need to build that stable that people recognize and know about. It’s one of the basic elements of television,” says Grossman.

But does that personality have to fit the standard mold? “We were all bidding for the old job,” says one network correspondent whose name has been mentioned in the past as a potential anchor. “That means a strait-laced guy, with experience overseas and covering politics, who is square-jawed and well-spoken and very mainstream, with a little bit of ego, and looks good in an Armani.” He thinks the anchor of tomorrow may in fact be someone who is able to redefine the job, “a new kind of anchorperson so different they have to invent him or herself.”

Even if the programs do survive intact, no anchor is expected to step aside for at least a couple of years, but that hasn’t stopped the names of successors from bubbling up.

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Recently, Williams has taken some critical knocks for his long-winded approach since getting his own MSNBC newscast, and NBC has also upped its anchor talent ranks with the hiring of ABC’s Forrest Sawyer and the promotion of John Seigenthaler to weekend anchor, replacing Williams (who remains Brokaw’s designated weekday substitute). That’s prompted whispering that Williams may not be the heir apparent. Not so, says Wheatley. Williams “is clearly the front-runner,” he says flatly.

Who’s on tap at the other networks? John Roberts, who often subs for Rather, has been groomed at CBS; Pelley is also whispered about as a contender, after he was promoted from the Dallas bureau to the White House beat in 1997, a job long considered a necessary credential for anchors-to-be. Last summer, he was made a correspondent on the high-profile newsmagazine “60 Minutes II”; his White House job went to Roberts.

“Certainly, there’s been a conscious effort on my part and on theirs [Pelley and Roberts] to develop the kind of experience that might lead to the anchor chair someday,” says CBS News’ Heyward. “We’re not setting up a deliberate rivalry, but it’s obviously in the interests of CBS News to have very strong correspondents in their 40s with a variety of skills to anchor and report in high-visibility positions. I’m extremely satisfied with their development.”

Roberts says he’s focused on accumulating as much experience as possible, even if the changing economics of the business mean that he spends one month in places like Yugoslavia instead of the years overseas that his predecessors might have. As to his potential shot at replacing Rather, he says: “People like to speculate; I just try and do the best job I can.”

ABC has the deepest anchor talent of any network, thanks to former ABC News President Roone Arledge’s eye for stars, and there are any number of anchors there who could step into the top job at a minute’s notice: Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, former “CBS Evening News” co-anchor Connie Chung or “Nightline” anchor Ted Koppel; all have anchored the broadcast, as have Charles Gibson, Jack Ford, Elizabeth Vargas and Aaron Brown. “We talk a lot here about the fact that we’ve had a very dominant front line and a great bench,” says Entelis, “which some people have complained has made it difficult to groom the next generation. . . . Finding ways to wedge in new people can be difficult.”

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No one person seems on track to replace Jennings whenever he decides to leave the post.

That could be a good thing.

“It’s a precarious game,” Entelis says. “You almost don’t want to be that person named too soon, because it creates a lot of expectations.”

Williams is sometimes accused of taking himself too seriously as he sits in wait to possibly replace Brokaw. “I don’t wake up every day thinking about the future,” he says, although he admits that his wife “laments that I’ve never been able to enjoy any job I’m in, and it’s true that I’ve been chased by the specter of my next job all through my career.” Still, he says, “I think some of that is calming down.”