Word: anchors
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...professional life of a network TV news anchor is too hectic to be called solitary, too lucrative to qualify as nasty or brutish, but often short: Walter Cronkite of CBS has been the only first-stringer at any network to hold the job to retirement age. Last week the industry shook its kaleidoscope once again. What seemed to be emerging, by week's end, was a pattern that American viewers have hardly ever seen: head-to-head, half-hour competition among solo anchors at all three commercial networks...
...Labor Day, against NBC's boyish Tom Brokaw, 43, who at present is a coanchor. At ABC, which has had a three-cornered format, executives are expected to announce this week that elegant, Canada-born Peter Jennings, 45, will be the central figure of a revamped one-anchor show. Contends Van Gordon Sauter, president of CBS News: "A one-anchor format provides continuity, more time for stories and less fragmentation of viewers' attention...
...shift in pattern was prompted by the death two weeks ago of ABC'S Washington-based anchor, Frank Reynolds. After he went on sick leave in April, ABC'S nightly news ratings dropped from second place to third, but the advantage went mostly to CBS. Those results convinced top officials at NBC that the pairing of the puckish Brokaw and dour Roger Mudd, 55, had little chance of catching on. A peripatetic workaholic, Brokaw has made mild fun of Mudd's reluctance to leave Washington in pursuit of story or spectacle. Though Brokaw continues to regard Mudd...
...after Reynolds died, NBC News President Reuven Frank demoted Mudd in a confrontation that Frank described as "painful but not acrimonious." Mudd was lured from CBS in 1980, after losing to Rather in the competition to succeed Cronkite, with the promise that he would become NBC'S sole anchor if John Chancellor stepped down. Later Mudd agreed to share the job to help NBC keep Brokaw. For his pains, Mudd was reassigned to what he does as well as nearly anyone else in television, political reporting. He announced his ouster to newsroom colleagues last Tuesday. Nothing was said...
...News, where President Roone Arledge has ardently wooed big names, staffers raised objections to Mudd as a potential anchor: he is a two-time castoff; hiring him would bypass ABC veterans; as a coworker, he is distant and demanding. Said ABC News Vice President Richard Wald: "We would rather have someone from inside." Among ABC correspondents, Jennings is the obvious choice. He was ABC'S anchor for three years, beginning in 1965, when he was only 27, and has been persuasive if cerebral as a London-based coanchor; since he shifted to Washington July 4 as a substitute...