Word: nbc
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...current champion, CBS's intense, adrenal Dan Rather, 51, will be matched, starting on 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...
...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 as a friend...
...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...
Installation of a single anchor at each network would be almost a first for the era since the three newscasts expanded to half an hour in the 1960s. The only other instance was during an eleven-month period in 1975 and 1976, when Cronkite competed with Chancellor at NBC and Harry Reasoner at ABC. The change would be most dramatic for ABC, which invented the multianchor "whiparound" because it lacked a single, forceful personality. Almost accidentally, ABC created a version of Marshall McLuhan's "global village," with newscasters focusing on diverse stories as they viewed the world from different...
...deposit, refundable later without interest. "We had no funds, no office, no telephone," says Ueberroth, whose staff will swell from 425 currently to 35,000 by next July. "We needed an income source." The winner, ABC, will ante up $225 million, nearly three times what NBC paid for Moscow. Says ABC Sports Vice President John Martin, "Peter was tough, but fair. We should make a modest profit...