Word: anchors
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Jessica Savitch? Millions of TV viewers knew her as the glamorous and authoritative NBC News anchor who was a role model for scores of aspiring women journalists. To her colleagues on the set, however, she was an anorexic, acne-scarred prima donna who would throw tantrums over the slightest inconvenience or reject a glass of water because it was too warm. And to those who claimed to know her best, she was a vivacious and vulnerable woman who became so debilitated by insecurity and drug abuse that she could barely function without a nursemaid. When Savitch's end finally came...
Still, the three networks together spent $5 million on the event, according to one former network executive; shipped in 50 tons of equipment; and showcased star correspondents. All three evening news anchors -- Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw -- were in attendance. Also along were Washington heavyweights like ABC's Sam Donaldson and a morning anchor from each network: Today's Bryant Gumbel, Good Morning, America's Charles Gibson and CBS This Morning's Kathleen Sullivan. The networks built temporary studios on a balcony at the Rossiya Hotel. Soviet officials even lighted up the onion domes of St. Basil...
...another matter. With little chance for enterprising scoops, the networks elbowed one another for minor coups. ABC noted that it was the first to transmit pictures from inside the Kremlin, and CBS landed an interview with former Moscow Party Chief Boris Yeltsin. CBS's Rather, meanwhile, was the only anchor to get a face-to- face encounter with Gorbachev. It came by chance when the CBS crew, shooting inside the Kremlin, spotted the Soviet leader's entourage. While CBS Executive David Buksbaum created a diversionary scene, Rather squeezed past security guards for a few brief questions. (CNN's Steve Hurst...
...Story Syndrome. When the networks scramble to outdo one another, they seem to lose a measure of perspective. The CBS Evening News, in particular, turned into an odd cross between PM Magazine and The McLaughlin Group, with Rather strolling around Red Square with his temporary co-anchor, Charles Kuralt, and sitting down each evening to gab with three correspondents about the day's events. Adding to the prepackaged, magazine- show look: Rather, unlike Brokaw and Jennings, taped his segments several hours in advance, so he could be seen in the bright sunshine rather than in the Moscow darkness...
...Evening News away from bland Washington stories and toward an emphasis on heart-tugging TV "moments"; who ruthlessly divided the CBS News staff into "yesterday" people (those identified with the Murrow-Cronkite era) and "today" people (the younger, TV-fluent crowd); who pushed for hiring Phyllis George as co-anchor of the CBS Morning News. "Sauter was in charge," writes Boyer, "and it was clear that he wasn't there to validate the glories of CBS News past. He was there to vanquish the past, to repudiate an approach to television that was seen as hidebound and irrelevant...