ABC eager to meet ‘Press’ challenge

When ABC “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos was the host of a tony Washington book party at his Georgetown house in June, he invited his Sunday morning TV competition. Tim Russert, host of NBC’s top-rated “Meet the Press,” amiably rose to the occasion, at one point holding court in Stephanopoulos’ kitchen, in full sight of those walking in.

Behind the scenes, if not at parties, the Sunday morning rivalry is about to get a touch less all-in-good-fun. Political Washington has been buzzing for weeks about Russert’s growing clout, going so far as to proclaim success or failure as a guest on his program a primary election unto itself for the Democratic presidential candidates.

So with Stephanopoulos’ show struggling in the ratings -- losing out last season to both Russert and CBS’ “Face the Nation,” whose host is veteran Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer -- ABC News recently took the unusual step of moving “This Week” under the control of the established “Nightline,” merging the two staffs and promising nothing short of reinventing the genre.

Shepherding the “If you can’t beat ‘em, change the game” strategy is Tom Bettag, who was promoted from “Nightline” executive producer (one of two) to senior executive producer. Bettag, 58, is old enough to remember how the recently deceased David Brinkley reinvented Sunday morning television when he launched “This Week” back in 1981; it remained dominant until he stepped down in 1996. A few incarnations later (hosts Cokie Roberts and Sam Donaldson preceded Stephanopoulos, who took over last summer), many in Washington still refer to the current program as “The Brinkley Show.”

With their interviews of newsmakers and panel discussions, “All of the Sunday morning broadcasts are working off of a form David Brinkley did in the early ‘80s,” Bettag charges. Although he’s not ready to talk specifically about what he plans, Bettag adds, “Nothing says Sunday morning television has to look the same way it has for 25 years.”

While CBS’ “Face the Nation” is a half-hour, and Schieffer is the folksiest of the hosts, the top three shows do have a similar look and feel, and often, the same guests making the rounds. It’s a format that has lately been working very well primarily for Russert, a former Democratic operative who was NBC’s Washington bureau chief when he was tapped to host the show in December 1991. In January, he will become the 55-year-old program’s longest-tenured moderator.

Leading the pack

With an emphasis on breaking news, and not on explaining the week-that-was, the show moved into first place in the 1997-98 season and never looked back. During the just-concluded 2002-03 season, “Meet the Press” averaged 4.71 million viewers, a full 62% over CBS’ 2.91 million and 72% ahead of ABC’s 2.75 million. “Fox News Sunday,” with host Tony Snow, averaged 1.64 million, although Fox says it is the fastest growing of the shows this year.

Meanwhile, there’s also been new competition this year, a syndicated Sunday morning show, hosted by NBC’s Chris Matthews, that has been pulling strong numbers in some big cities.

Just as important is who is tuning in ... and tuning out. ABC’s Bettag says all the current broadcasts “have a little insider quality. They are by insiders for insiders and are exclusionary to some people. They turn some people off.”

Indeed, the average viewer is probably not obsessed with whether Democratic candidate John Edwards will make a return appearance on “Meet the Press,” a topic that has become practically a running soap opera for some political pundits. Nonetheless, Russert has seemingly mastered the balance of speaking both for those inside the Washington loop and his mythical average viewer in Buffalo, his hometown. When Democratic candidate Howard Dean was a guest in June, he fumbled some key answers, which was immediately jumped on in political circles. But paradoxically, the appearance also generated a fund-raising spurt among his outside-the-Beltway supporters.

“You should never overestimate your audience in terms of their intricate knowledge of Washington, but you should also never underestimate them,” Russert says. “You can run into real trouble when you try to present things in a packaged way, where you’re talking down to them. People are pretty smart, sophisticated.”

Russert’s style has been dissected by the press and by the media strategists who help craft his guests’ images. He’s not interested in rehashing the past, but moving the story forward. He takes a contrarian point of view, whether his guest is liberal or conservative. He and his staff do lots of research, in obscure publications, to lay out the guests’ past words and positions, which they then put up on a screen, the show’s hallmark.

Before he popularized the graphics, guests would argue with him that they had never made the comments he was alleging and “it became this argument that really wasn’t very productive,” Russert says. Putting the words up also “frames the issue” for the audience, he says.

Lately, guests are trying to outthink the master. “I actually did a Tim Russert,” guest Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., (D-Del.), said on a recent show, as he pulled out one of his past quotes that he had dug up so Russert wouldn’t be able to play “gotcha” and confront him with it.

Russert says that’s fine with him. “Just imagine now, if every politician who comes on ‘Meet the Press’ is aware that what they say is important, that they’ll be held accountable for the promises they make, or the commitments they offer. I think that’s very healthy.”

ABC seeks faster pace

Bettag, who is the same age as the show’s average viewer, declines to be specific about what he has in mind for “This Week,” except to say that it will have a faster pace, noting “it’s too slow for me, too ponderous for me.”

But all the changes that he hints at would clearly take it far from the “Meet the Press” model. Not everyone at “This Week” is happy; some staffers have been grumbling that the changes will mean less politics and more soft features.

He says the new show will continue to go after political interviews aggressively and it won’t look like “Nightline,” although it will tap into the late night show’s expertise at putting together polished reports from outside the studio.

Stephanopoulos has already been hitting the road often, traveling to the Middle East, to Iowa with presidential candidate John Kerry, to South Carolina for a Democratic candidates’ debate. On Sunday he hosted the show from South Korea for the 50th anniversary of the Korean War armistice.

Both Schieffer and Russert, in the meantime, had Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, talking about the situation in Iraq, while Russert also had an exclusive interview with all four leaders of the Joint Intelligence Committee’s inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks discussing their report.

“Rather than bring John Kerry in for another Sunday morning interview, we did a day in the life of John Kerry,” Bettag says. “It’s something George would do in an instant, that Tim isn’t going to do, that Bob [Schieffer] isn’t going to do. I think the audience is better served.”

But live in-studio reporting is relatively cheap compared to what Bettag is proposing, and some wonder where ABC will get the money. Although “This Week” is profitable, it doesn’t generate the upwards of $50 million that “Meet the Press” churns out, according to NBC sources. Bettag says that by merging “This Week” and “Nightline,” “we get budget efficiencies that will allow us to do these other things that cost more money.”

As for Russert, he professes not to be worried:

“Ours is a simple format. A guest comes in, sits down, we turn on the camera, we ask hard questions in an aggressive but civil manner, we try to gain insight into where the nation’s and the world’s leaders want to lead us.”

But he adds an amiable dig: “Other formats have much higher production values. That’s not who we are. We’re going to stay true to our mission.”