One man's death does not the end of an era mark, despite declarations by TV-biz soothsayers after Peter Jennings' sad passing from lung cancer on August 7, at age 67.
THE DAYS OF NETWORK NEWS ARE OVER! THE AUDIENCE IS OLD! THE FORMAT IS ANCIENT! THE TRADITION IS DYING!
Really-truly-no-foolin'? With the ABC, NBC and CBS nightly newscasts still exceeding 25 million viewers combined—sans Messrs. Rather, Brokaw and Jennings (absent from the broadcast since April)—that seems a smidge presumptuous. And it smacks of columnists' irresistible urge to proclaim the explosions and implosions of industry trends to whittle away those pesky column inches and on-air minutes.
Sweeping pronouncements pack more pizzazz.
But this is more a leveling of the playing field—on which the nets still swing a pretty fearsome bat against their cable cousins—and a clarification of the chaos in TV news that Jennings' death symbolically puts into sharper focus, but has been evident for quite awhile.
It's anyone's game now—including the nets, if they apply some smarts to the situation.
But first ... a little respect. Beyond his hard-earned journalistic cred, Jennings, the longtime ABC World News Tonight anchor, was that rare TV creature—a warm presence radiating utter cool, or as Dan Rather aptly put it: elegant and eloquent, a combo his colleagues couldn't come near.
Much has been recalled of Jennings' heroic 60-plus hours on-air during 9/11, when his pitch-perfect style somehow lent an under-control grounding to our panicky perceptions of an out-of-control world. I might flip around to take in the sights on NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox or MSNBC, but I always bounced back to Peter—informative, but also dapper, reasonable and even-tempered (as opposed to Rather's barely coiled emotionalism and Brokaw's tight aloofness)—making Jennings the most reassuring network newsman since Uncle Walter.
The man will be missed.
And yes, The Big Troika of Jennings, Brokaw and Rather did collapse—via death, retirement and forced resignation, respectively—with astonishing speed over the last year, a seemingly overnight deconstruction of the Cronkite ("And that's the way it is")/Huntley-Brinkley ("Goodnight, Chet"; "Goodnight, David") lineage of which, to varying degrees, Peter, Dan and Tom were descendants.
They also played primary news-giver to probably the last generation—the boomers—raised overwhelmingly on a media more genuinely dedicated to attitude-free reporting and the "fair and balanced"/"we report, you decide" mantra than those who've refashioned that ideal (or twisted it, depending on your own news and political biases) into ideological advocacy in the new century.
That isn't necessarily bad, but it is a fascinating signpost toward media realignment.
What we have now is perhaps the most democratized, diverse news landscape in the medium's history, a business reinventing itself into ... what? It's a damn free-for-all, the shakeout still to come.
Spin around the remote. You thought the nets were the Edsels of TV news? At least they regularly jazzed up their presentations. PBS still lets their horse-and-buggy version, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, out of the stable every night—and thank the TV gods. With its lengthy segments, preference for clarity over confrontation and civil, thoughtful discourse by guests, it's the best minute-by-minute news on television.
Fox News, despite its pathetic denials, is a 24-hour Republican talking point. And CNN, in a more subtle manner—or "cowardly," if you're a Fox fanatic—responded by tilting leftward. Neither approach, while relatively new to American audiences, are radical in Europe, where advocacy news is the longtime model—but not quite as pronounced as, say, Al-Jazeera.
At MSNBC, ex-CNN-er Tucker Carlson's new The Situation is more of a kindly right-wing talking point, Carlson conducting polite but spirited discussions with those who both agree and disagree with him, but ultimately carried by The Bow-Tied One's conservatism.
Most intriguing in pointing toward the future are one show that both seriously reports and mocks actual news, and another with mock news that some—at least on some level—take seriously.
The former, MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, is rife with kooky sound effects, goofy visuals and snazzy music, when the subject is human silliness ("Let's play Oddball!"), then can whip around to seriousness at breakneck speed when the subject calls for it.
The latter, Jon Stewart's much-acclaimed, highly hilarious Daily Show, a political spoof-o-rama par excellence on Comedy Central, sent ripples of dismay through punditry circles last year when a study reported that a not-insignificant slice of younger viewers used Stewart as their sole news source.
And the nets? No immediate surrender in sight, with signs indicating they're ready to fight to remain relevant.
NBC transitioned perfectly out of Brokaw and into Brian Williams, TV's most Jennings-like anchor and a youthful 46. And he was wisely groomed over at sister cable outfit MSNBC, developing a younger following he brought with him to the parent network. This week, ABC moved quickly, signalling their intention to still treat the evening news as a network centerpiece. Charles Gibson, the likable Good Morning, America co-host, was mentioned as a possible replacement, but more enticing was the candidacy of 42-year-old Elizabeth Vargas, whose youth, vibrancy (not to mention gender) could electrify the broadcast. Over at CBS, although temp anchor Bob Schieffer is 67—the same age as Jennings—his stately demeanor lends him an older countenance, but he'd provide a classy counterpoint for the oncoming rush of retiring boomer viewers, whose sheer numbers and buying power will soon make seniors a demo to respect, not ridicule.
No one's counted out in this emerging new paradigm. Though most of America is wired for cable, most of America isn't addicted to 24-hour news channels.
Now it's more a matter of, Everybody in the pool.
But as I consider the reconfigurations TV news can now pretzel itself into, I'm struck by a comforting thought:
Uncle Walter still lives.