Word: anchors
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...network anchor may, after years of struggle, bring nationwide fame and fortune. But there are now literally hundreds of men and women who, sometimes with the flimsiest of credentials, are making big names and big money anchoring local news programs. That ostensibly undemanding vocation is fast becoming the most financially rewarding job in journalism...
Dozens of local anchors are making more than $100,000 a year, and at least 16 make $200,000 or more (see box). Of course, stratospheric salaries were common at the networks even before Barbara Walters signed her million-dollar contract with ABC two years ago. What is new is that the pearly-toothed, cleft-chinned basso profundos who tell the way it was in your home town are starting to earn network-size salaries. "Only three or four years ago it was significant if an anchor earned $100,000," says Richard Leibner, one of a growing number of talent...
...Television executives believe that the easiest way to win evening-news ratings points is to find, and keep, an anchor with that certain something -looks, sex appeal, credibility-that viewers like. A single ratings point in a major market like New York, Los Angeles or Chicago is worth more than $500,000 in yearly station revenues. When executives at Chicago's CBS-owned WBBM this year figured they would lose three evening-news ratings points if Anchor Bill Kurtis jumped to NBC-owned WMAQ, they won him back by counteroffering $250,000 a year. They considered it a bargain...
That is not invariably the case. It is true that some anchors do little more than read scripts they did not write about news they did not select, and some are Ted Baxter types distinguished by appearance more than ability. Handsome, blow-dried Ron Hunter, for instance, is resigning from Chicago's WMAQ this month in the face of stagnant ratings and intense vilification by the city's acerbic TV critics. "He couldn't cover his nose, much less a fire," sniffs the Sun-Times's Swertlow. Yet many of the six-figure anchors, probably...
...half years ago, Beatty began building a mansion near his pal Jack Nicholson's spread on Mulholland Drive; there isn't a soul in Hollywood who believes that Beatty will ever move into it. "There's no anchor in Warren's life," observes one friend. "Warren is always on the go," says Arthur Penn. "He travels light and takes one small suitcase from coast to coast. I guess you'd call him a very rich migrant worker." Last week Beatty arrived in New York to organize the advance screenings of Heaven Can Wait and harass the Paramount sales force with...