Word: chungli
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...network bosses (his closest CBS colleagues purged, his story ideas slighted). But the scenario is still Chayefskian, and now there's a real-life Network II: in a goose-the-ratings gambit, the bosses oblige the battered, brave protagonist (Rather) to accept a hustling, not exactly cerebral woman (Connie Chung) as his co-anchor...
...With Chung and Rather going on the air together next Tuesday, there is a curiously hasty quality to the rejiggering. Stringer wanted to have the deal done before the CBS affiliates' meeting this week, and he was apparently in a fret about the competition. He may be worried that Andrew Lack, the smart new NBC News president who came from CBS (where he was Chung's executive producer), will work some sudden magic at NBC. Then there's the chance CBS may lose Ed Bradley, who is being offered millions to defect...
...Chung's greatest virtue is her high Q rating, the annual measure of celebrities' celebrity and popularity. Her number may be skewed upward, however, by her singular recognizability: she is the only Asian-American TV star. While Chung is a decent newsreader, and CBS staff munchkins like her let's-order-a-pizza! perkiness, peers and former colleagues tend to be ungenerous. "Call Connie, ask what really interests her," says a fellow network anchor. "You'll get a blank screen." (I did. "I wish I could tell you," she replied. "What is a Connie Chung story? I'm hard...
...Cronkite's passing and Reagan's ignorance-is-bliss- ism, started abandoning the nightly-news ritual. Today 1 in 2 Americans over 50 still tunes in one of the network shows. But among adults under 35, barely 1 in 13 watches Brokaw or Jennings or Rather. And Connie Chung is not likely to change that...
SPECTATOR: From Cronkite to Chung...