Word: abc
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...fickle world of television, where most programs have precariously short lives, the long-running network news shows have proudly been the most resistant to change. But they're changing now, as ABC's World News Tonight - long a poor third - prepares to overtake the NBC Nightly News, while CBS's Evening News continues its reign...
...idea that news can be entertaining has surely occurred to Roone Arledge. Two years ago, in safari-jacketed splendor, Arledge emerged from a golden career as head of ABC Sports to take over ABC News as well. A collective shudder passed down through rows of the three-buttoned news executives. Arledge was celebrated for zippy sports coverage, instant replays, constant chatter (including the grating homilies of Howard Cosell) and ceaseless hype. Was he going to bring the same show-biz techniques to the serious business of news broadcasting? The man most worried was CBS News President Richard S. Salant...
Salant left CBS this year upon reaching its mandatory retirement age of 65, but NBC quickly hired him as vice chair man for news. A lawyer by trade, he is breezy, tough and smart - and responsible. He was disturbed when ABC made Barbara Walters an anchorwoman; he was even more offended when Arledge began hyping up ABC News - a process that reached a nadir with the tabloid-style coverage of the "Son of Sam" murder case in 1977. Unable to match Cronkite's authority and popularity, Arledge countered with the gimmickry of three anchormen, "tossing" the news from Washington...
...years since, Arledge and Salant have come to exemplify the two poles of what network news programs want to do most: excite or inform. ABC's World News To night has got consistently sharper. Arledge demands and gets inventive technology. ABC, once el cheapo of the networks (it used to be said that ABC was the last to arrive at the scene and the first to leave), now spends good money to get good people. Arledge hired Richard Wald (once head of NBC News) to run his news operation, a job that Wald defines as "calming the process down...
Executives at ABC, by contrast, were exuberant in their praise after Carson's performance as host of the Academy Awards on their network in April, and they gave him an expensive ostrich-skin attaché case. Last June, Carson, vacationing on the French Riviera, found himself staying at the same hotel as ABC Executives Elton Rule and Fred Pierce. They went sailing, and Carson told friends that he developed a fast rapport with the men from ABC...