Topple after Koppel? Not quite

In the beginning, Cynthia McFadden couldn’t get Ted Koppel’s voice out of her head.

McFadden, one of the three anchors who in November took over ABC’s “Nightline,” the venerable late-night news franchise that Koppel pioneered, described succeeding the veteran newsman as “sort of like walking into a buzz saw.”

“At first we were really trying so hard, the show just felt a little stiff,” she said. “I kept thinking, ‘I can’t be Ted Koppel.’ ”

Critics didn’t think so, either. They derided the changes to the program -- the anchor trio split between Washington and New York, the flashy new opening, the multi-topic format -- and fretted that the show would forgo the kind of sober, in-depth journalism for which it had become known for 25 years.

“It was a challenge,” admitted executive producer James Goldston, a former BBC producer who was brought aboard to develop the new incarnation of the program. “There was a real debate about what kind of a show ‘Nightline’ should be and whether that show had a future in the modern world.”

Within weeks, producers abandoned their plan to have all three anchors on every night, deciding that the program felt too crowded. In the ensuing months, the staff continued to tinker with the show’s tone and mix of stories -- leading to sometimes heated arguments about its content.

It hasn’t been easy, but the results have been promising; six months after its uneven start, the new “Nightline” is not only holding its own, but also has gained viewers in recent months. According to Nielsen Media Research, more than 3.5 million people on average have tuned into the program since January, an increase of 3% over the same time period last year. The ratings uptick -- along with a boost of 7% among the coveted younger demographic -- comes even as late-night competitors Jay Leno and David Letterman have suffered a small erosion in their audiences.

“It has done everything we asked of it: to put on a program of substance, and in that sense continue in the ‘Nightline’ tradition, but at the same time hold the ‘Nightline’ audience in a world after Ted Koppel and grow that audience,” said ABC News President David Westin. “That’s a pretty remarkable accomplishment.”

Indeed, the program’s measured success in its new form comes as an intriguing counterpoint to the sagging ratings this season at most of the evening newscasts and prime-time newsmagazine programs.

“Nightline” is still very much a show in transition, producers admit, and the process of finding the right balance of substantive news and topical pieces has been bumpy at times. A story that aired last month about the new musical “Tarzan” on Broadway, produced by the Walt Disney Co. -- ABC’s parent corporation -- drew strong objections from anchor Terry Moran, among others, and led to an intense internal debate, according to people familiar with the situation.

But the recast “Nightline” has largely proved reassuring to many who were wary about the post-Koppel era.

“I had a lot of misgivings about what it meant that they wanted to retool the show,” said correspondent John Donvan, who has reported for the program since 1998. “I have to say I’m very pleasantly surprised. My main thing was, ‘Are we going to get stupid?’ And I don’t think we’ve gotten stupid at all.”

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A range of topics

In recent weeks, the program has offered extensive pieces on immigration, autistic adults, the boom in fertility treatments and the shortage of medication for AIDS patients in Africa. The broadcast has largely dispensed with the newsmaker interviews that used to be the show’s centerpiece, in part because it now airs live at 11:35 p.m. EDT, making it difficult to book guests.

But one result is that the main story of the night is often eight to 10 minutes long, a luxurious amount of time unavailable on most other newscasts, save perhaps CBS’ “60 Minutes.”

“We’ve seen it happen before where shows with grand traditions remake themselves as less than what they were before, and I was determined we wouldn’t do that,” Goldston said. “It would be foolish to pretend that it isn’t a work in progress. But I think we’ve come a long way in a very short time.”

Added anchor Martin Bashir: “I don’t think we’re anywhere near where we’d like to be, but the signs are encouraging.”

Still, some longtime staffers have watched the program’s recent period of experimentation with alarm. A piece about the racially diverse cast of the hit ABC show “Grey’s Anatomy” that ran in March as part of “America in Black and White,” “Nightline’s” long-running series on race relations, was viewed by some as a promotion of the network’s entertainment side that would not have happened under the previous leadership.

Even more controversial was the “Tarzan” segment, which ran May 10, the night the show opened on Broadway. Producers agreed to do the piece as a package with another story that ran on “Good Morning America,” to the chagrin of some “Nightline” staffers.

“There were some very unhappy people,” said one ABC News employee familiar with the debate.

Moran acknowledged that he was one of those who didn’t feel comfortable with the segment but declined to elaborate, saying he did not want to get into internal discussions.

“One of the fun things about being at this program is we have knock-down, drag-’em-out fights about what we should cover,” he said. “We’re making it up as we go along. That’s the thrill of it.”

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Downplaying the debate

Goldston said there was no pressure from Disney to do the piece, noting that “Nightline’s” efforts to cover popular culture will inevitably put the program in a position of doing stories about its own company. And he downplayed the debate over the segment, saying it wasn’t contentious. “We have discussions all the time,” he said. “I think that’s inevitable and healthy on a show that’s in many ways all about the mix.”

Moran, a former White House correspondent, said the program is still evolving but added that he believes it has an opportunity to do the kind of long-form, investigative pieces that are increasingly rare on other newscasts.

“I think we’re still carving out what will be distinctive about the post-Ted Koppel ‘Nightline,’ ” he said. “We want to make it feel like nowhere else in television will you be able to get these stories. We aren’t there yet.”

The most persistent criticism: The new “Nightline” is a paler version of the original, more of a broad newsmagazine than a substantive news program. But Donvan said that many forget that the old “Nightline” did a range of stories as well.

“I think the critics had a skewed view of what the show had been,” he said. “I did a lot of light stuff, including an entire half-hour on [PBS’] Mr. Rogers. Before, we had a magazine concept spread across the week. What we have now is more accelerated.”

After an interim period in which the new program has been “trying all sorts of things for flash and glitz,” Donvan added, “I think we’ve found our way back to pieces that much more consistently reflect the values of the old ‘Nightline.’ ”

Still, everyone agrees they still have work to do. Westin wants the program to develop “a big tent-pole substantive series,” much like the live town meetings Koppel held in South Africa, the Middle East and around the United States.

And many on the show agree that the weakest features are the “Sign of the Times” end pieces, meant to be whimsical stories on modern life. Recent topics include “macho” food advertising, celebrity baby name trends and on-air presidential bloopers.

“When they’re on the money, they’re terrific,” McFadden said. “When they’re not -- they’re not.

“Do I think we’re perfect? I don’t,” she added. “But I think we’re shooting in the right direction. There’s nothing complacent about this. The worst critics of this broadcast work here.”