That's the Way It Was, Walter
Transcript
BROOKE GLADSTONE: TV's nightly newscast in its current form is like a monument, as enduring and usually as expressive as the Sphinx. But it was not inevitable. It evolved slowly, first as the 10-minute Camel Newsreel Theater on NBC, featuring John Cameron Swayze and the Movietone Newsreels. By 1948, it had expanded to 15 minutes. CBS followed swiftly with its own 15-minute newscasts with Douglas Edwards. There were other serious public affairs shows on network TV. But for the nightly news, the years toddled quietly by, until Chet Huntley and David Brinkley replaced Swayze in 1956, and Walter Cronkite replaced Edwards in '62. Then the game was on.
WALTER CRONKITE: Good evening from our CBS newsroom in New York on this, the first broadcast of network television's first daily half-hour news program.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: From there, you know the story. It was the golden age of news, especially of CBS news, culminating in Cronkite being voted "Most Trusted Man in America" in a 1973 poll. Until his retirement in 1981, he was our Uncle Walter, who signed off each night with the phrase:
WALTER CRONKITE: And that's the way it is, Monday, September the 2nd, nineteen sixty- [FADE-OUT]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: All three networks took their cues from Cronkite, offering an array of avuncular faces, Dan Rather on CBS, Howard K. Smith, Harry Reasoner and Peter Jennings on ABC, John Chancellor, Tom Brokaw and, now Brian Williams, on NBC. Solid and dependable as the living room couch, network anchors have always set America's news agenda. [NBC NEWS THEME MUSIC]
ANNOUNCER: From NBC News World Headquarters in New York, this is NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.
BRIAN WILLIAMS: Good evening. It was billed as a chance for the President to hear directly - [FADE-OUT]
TOM ROSENSTIEL: The thing that they really believe in their DNA is that they are a gatekeeper, that they're going to help the audience order the news, they're going to make sense of it for them.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Tom Rosensteel is the Director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which produces an annual report on the state of the news media. According to that report, the audience for network news has steadily eroded from more than 50 million collectively in 1980 to less than 30 million today. The time slot works against it - people don't sit down for news and dinner any more, all the competing news outlets on cable and the Web work against it, and a general societal skepticism works against it too.
RICHARD WALD: The world is not so clearly interested in having a voice of authority.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Richard Wald was president of NBC News and vice-president of ABC News.
RICHARD WALD: That's the temper of the times. The world wants a voice of explanation.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Is that what the world wants? Les Moonves, chairman of CBS, last month told the New York Times that when it comes to news, we have to break the mold, we have no choice. He half-joked that on a British cable show women in lingerie read the news, which is more interesting than two boring people behind a desk. "Our newscast," he said, "has to be somewhere in between, wherever that is." Richard Wald.
RICHARD WALD: The truth of the matter is that very few people know what it is that makes successful television. You wind up being tutored by what's already present. So the tendency is to stay with what you've got.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But though the nightly network news is still profitable, what it's got is wearing out, just like that living room couch. Max Robins is the Editor of Broadcasting and Cable.
MAX ROBINS: I think that there is a lot of panic out there. But I will tell you this. Let's say Les Moonves makes good on his word and they really kind of blow up the CBS Evening News format and it plays a lot more like MTV News than the CBS Evening News, my prediction here is that you'll see immediately the ratings for their competition, NBC Nightly News and World News Tonight, spike.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: You can't fix the nightly news by changing the pictures, not even with lingerie. The way news is presented has to change in a fundamental way, the same way radio changed news by adding sound and TV changed news by adding pictures. The old media are reeling still from the impact of the Internet because it adds a new element every bit as revolutionary as pictures or sound, namely audience participation. To survive, TV news has to reckon with the irrepressible interactivity of the Internet, the blogs that fact check, sleuth and swarm.
JAY ROSEN: This ability to talk back, which is very effective in certain ways, has, of course, changed the talkers.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen writes the blog pressthink.org. Last month he attended a meeting of bloggers and big-time network news honchos, including CBS News president Andrew Hayward. Blogger Terry Heaton took notes, and, according to Heaton, the CBS News chief said that the blogs were breaking down old formulas, that the illusion of omniscience was out of date, and that news with a point of view is now an acceptable form.
JAY ROSEN: There's a view of news that says that the real product of news is not the newscast, but trust.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Jay Rosen says people don't form bonds of trust the way they used to back in TV's heyday. To forge that essential bond, newscasters must reach out to viewers in a variety of ways.
JAY ROSEN: Now, if my bond with you is "I never tell what I think, I only tell you what I know and can verify," that is journalism. If I tell you, "I get involved in things and I show you what's happening to me, and that's how you learn," that's journalism. If I'm a partisan but I'm fair because I don't lie to you, that's journalism.
WALTER CRONKITE: From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official, President Kennedy died at 1 PM Central Standard Time. Vice-President Lyndon Johnson [CLEARS THROAT] has left the hospital in Dallas but we do not know to - [FADE-OUT]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: That rare display of grief by Cronkite surely is journalism. But is this?
JON STEWART: There are times when innocence dies. As a nation, we suffered that when Kennedy was killed. And today, once again, we as a nation have to come together to heal. Tom - Tom DeLay's been indicted. [AUDIENCE REACTION/LAUGHTER]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Jon Stewart, the host of Comedy Central's Daily Show, is constantly invoked with both trepidation and glee as a harbinger of one possible future for network news. And the fact is, in a study of 18- to 29-year-olds done before last year's election, Stewart was voted most trusted news anchor by those who get their news mostly from the Internet. He tied for first place with Tom Brokaw among the group as a whole. How that must gall Walter! Max Robins.
MAX ROBINS: When the next horrible hurricane devastates a city or the bombs start dropping on some other Middle Eastern city, I don't think the American public wants Jon Stewart in the anchor chair.
TOM ROSENSTIEL: Jon Stewart would be the first one to suggest to people, "that's insane."
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But, says Tom Rosensteel, networks would be wise to look beyond the comedy in Stewart's act. They could learn something.
TOM ROSENSTIEL: He speaks up to his audience, not down. He is skeptical of what people are telling him, and he shares that skepticism with the audience. And that skepticism is sort of part of the bond.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: If we presented Rosensteel's analysis to Stewart, he'd no doubt shrug and say, "Hey, I'm on cable!" And he'd be right. There is a kind of cable attitude - looser, hotter, less formal than the networks - that permeates both entertainment and news. On the 24-hour cable news channels, in the absence of real stories, talking heads babble speculation over undated footage. It sure looks different from the nightly network news.
ANDREW TYNDALL: I'm the only person in the universe who has watched every single newscast of the three broadcast networks every weeknight since 1987.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Andrew Tyndall is the author of the Tyndall Report, which tracks the content of the nightly newscasts minute by minute.
ANDREW TYNDALL: The things that the nightly newscasts are good at, which is very well-written, well-edited, densely-sourced packages which are two minutes long, are per minute of air time very expensive pieces of news to make. But a news organization can afford to make them if they're only broadcasting for half an hour.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: One good half hour versus 24 mostly mediocre hours of news. Who wins? Until the last few years, the big fight for audience has been waged between cable news and network news. But 24-hour cable, for all its ubiquity, also has profound limitations, says Tyndall, because it serves two masters, and neither of them well.
ANDREW TYNDALL: The one master, which is "I've just switched on television, I want to know what the latest news is," and then it's serving another one, which is "I've been watching your channel for the last two hours and I don't want to hear the same thing over and over and over again."
BROOKE GLADSTONE: In serving those two masters, cable has crafted a product that's so disposable it's not worth much to the burgeoning audience for news-on-demand online, but those highly-produced packages, roughly seven per show on the network nightly news, have a far longer shelf life. For an online news consumer searching for specific information, that's a cornucopia of concentrated content. In the new media world, it looks like the networks are better positioned to win.
ANDREW TYNDALL: We can even mix and match. We can get two from ABC, two from CBS, two from NBC, maybe, maybe some from the BBC or PBS or - or who knows? - the audio-visual outlet that the New York Times is going to provide. We're going to be able to assemble our own half-hour nightly newscasts, using these individual packages as the building blocks.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But in a future where we're all our own anchors, what will be the point of the nightly newscast? Well, according to Jay Rosen, it's a fabulous way to publicize your website.
JAY ROSEN: I would redefine the newscast as our way of driving people to the Web for the in-depth and really diverse coverage we provide. I would take the 1,500 [LAUGHS] people who work for CBS News and I would tell them, "You all work for the website now."
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Last year when ABC launched its digital service, ABC News Now, it created the means to leapfrog over cable directly onto the Net. Recently, CBS created Public Eye, essentially a blog run by journalists who will take questions and criticisms from the CBS audience to the CBS news staff and come back with answers. Transparency. Accountability. Guest bloggers. If, as the saying goes, the traditional voice of network news is the voice of God, then after 50 long years it seems the gods have decided to come down to earth and walk among us, at last. [MUSIC UP AND UNDER]
BOB GARFIELD: Coming up, video games with the power to persuade, and the most powerful man in media you've probably never heard of.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: This is On the Media from NPR. (FUNDING CREDITS)
copyright 2005 WNYC Radio
WALTER CRONKITE: Good evening from our CBS newsroom in New York on this, the first broadcast of network television's first daily half-hour news program.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: From there, you know the story. It was the golden age of news, especially of CBS news, culminating in Cronkite being voted "Most Trusted Man in America" in a 1973 poll. Until his retirement in 1981, he was our Uncle Walter, who signed off each night with the phrase:
WALTER CRONKITE: And that's the way it is, Monday, September the 2nd, nineteen sixty- [FADE-OUT]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: All three networks took their cues from Cronkite, offering an array of avuncular faces, Dan Rather on CBS, Howard K. Smith, Harry Reasoner and Peter Jennings on ABC, John Chancellor, Tom Brokaw and, now Brian Williams, on NBC. Solid and dependable as the living room couch, network anchors have always set America's news agenda. [NBC NEWS THEME MUSIC]
ANNOUNCER: From NBC News World Headquarters in New York, this is NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.
BRIAN WILLIAMS: Good evening. It was billed as a chance for the President to hear directly - [FADE-OUT]
TOM ROSENSTIEL: The thing that they really believe in their DNA is that they are a gatekeeper, that they're going to help the audience order the news, they're going to make sense of it for them.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Tom Rosensteel is the Director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which produces an annual report on the state of the news media. According to that report, the audience for network news has steadily eroded from more than 50 million collectively in 1980 to less than 30 million today. The time slot works against it - people don't sit down for news and dinner any more, all the competing news outlets on cable and the Web work against it, and a general societal skepticism works against it too.
RICHARD WALD: The world is not so clearly interested in having a voice of authority.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Richard Wald was president of NBC News and vice-president of ABC News.
RICHARD WALD: That's the temper of the times. The world wants a voice of explanation.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Is that what the world wants? Les Moonves, chairman of CBS, last month told the New York Times that when it comes to news, we have to break the mold, we have no choice. He half-joked that on a British cable show women in lingerie read the news, which is more interesting than two boring people behind a desk. "Our newscast," he said, "has to be somewhere in between, wherever that is." Richard Wald.
RICHARD WALD: The truth of the matter is that very few people know what it is that makes successful television. You wind up being tutored by what's already present. So the tendency is to stay with what you've got.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But though the nightly network news is still profitable, what it's got is wearing out, just like that living room couch. Max Robins is the Editor of Broadcasting and Cable.
MAX ROBINS: I think that there is a lot of panic out there. But I will tell you this. Let's say Les Moonves makes good on his word and they really kind of blow up the CBS Evening News format and it plays a lot more like MTV News than the CBS Evening News, my prediction here is that you'll see immediately the ratings for their competition, NBC Nightly News and World News Tonight, spike.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: You can't fix the nightly news by changing the pictures, not even with lingerie. The way news is presented has to change in a fundamental way, the same way radio changed news by adding sound and TV changed news by adding pictures. The old media are reeling still from the impact of the Internet because it adds a new element every bit as revolutionary as pictures or sound, namely audience participation. To survive, TV news has to reckon with the irrepressible interactivity of the Internet, the blogs that fact check, sleuth and swarm.
JAY ROSEN: This ability to talk back, which is very effective in certain ways, has, of course, changed the talkers.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen writes the blog pressthink.org. Last month he attended a meeting of bloggers and big-time network news honchos, including CBS News president Andrew Hayward. Blogger Terry Heaton took notes, and, according to Heaton, the CBS News chief said that the blogs were breaking down old formulas, that the illusion of omniscience was out of date, and that news with a point of view is now an acceptable form.
JAY ROSEN: There's a view of news that says that the real product of news is not the newscast, but trust.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Jay Rosen says people don't form bonds of trust the way they used to back in TV's heyday. To forge that essential bond, newscasters must reach out to viewers in a variety of ways.
JAY ROSEN: Now, if my bond with you is "I never tell what I think, I only tell you what I know and can verify," that is journalism. If I tell you, "I get involved in things and I show you what's happening to me, and that's how you learn," that's journalism. If I'm a partisan but I'm fair because I don't lie to you, that's journalism.
WALTER CRONKITE: From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official, President Kennedy died at 1 PM Central Standard Time. Vice-President Lyndon Johnson [CLEARS THROAT] has left the hospital in Dallas but we do not know to - [FADE-OUT]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: That rare display of grief by Cronkite surely is journalism. But is this?
JON STEWART: There are times when innocence dies. As a nation, we suffered that when Kennedy was killed. And today, once again, we as a nation have to come together to heal. Tom - Tom DeLay's been indicted. [AUDIENCE REACTION/LAUGHTER]
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Jon Stewart, the host of Comedy Central's Daily Show, is constantly invoked with both trepidation and glee as a harbinger of one possible future for network news. And the fact is, in a study of 18- to 29-year-olds done before last year's election, Stewart was voted most trusted news anchor by those who get their news mostly from the Internet. He tied for first place with Tom Brokaw among the group as a whole. How that must gall Walter! Max Robins.
MAX ROBINS: When the next horrible hurricane devastates a city or the bombs start dropping on some other Middle Eastern city, I don't think the American public wants Jon Stewart in the anchor chair.
TOM ROSENSTIEL: Jon Stewart would be the first one to suggest to people, "that's insane."
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But, says Tom Rosensteel, networks would be wise to look beyond the comedy in Stewart's act. They could learn something.
TOM ROSENSTIEL: He speaks up to his audience, not down. He is skeptical of what people are telling him, and he shares that skepticism with the audience. And that skepticism is sort of part of the bond.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: If we presented Rosensteel's analysis to Stewart, he'd no doubt shrug and say, "Hey, I'm on cable!" And he'd be right. There is a kind of cable attitude - looser, hotter, less formal than the networks - that permeates both entertainment and news. On the 24-hour cable news channels, in the absence of real stories, talking heads babble speculation over undated footage. It sure looks different from the nightly network news.
ANDREW TYNDALL: I'm the only person in the universe who has watched every single newscast of the three broadcast networks every weeknight since 1987.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Andrew Tyndall is the author of the Tyndall Report, which tracks the content of the nightly newscasts minute by minute.
ANDREW TYNDALL: The things that the nightly newscasts are good at, which is very well-written, well-edited, densely-sourced packages which are two minutes long, are per minute of air time very expensive pieces of news to make. But a news organization can afford to make them if they're only broadcasting for half an hour.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: One good half hour versus 24 mostly mediocre hours of news. Who wins? Until the last few years, the big fight for audience has been waged between cable news and network news. But 24-hour cable, for all its ubiquity, also has profound limitations, says Tyndall, because it serves two masters, and neither of them well.
ANDREW TYNDALL: The one master, which is "I've just switched on television, I want to know what the latest news is," and then it's serving another one, which is "I've been watching your channel for the last two hours and I don't want to hear the same thing over and over and over again."
BROOKE GLADSTONE: In serving those two masters, cable has crafted a product that's so disposable it's not worth much to the burgeoning audience for news-on-demand online, but those highly-produced packages, roughly seven per show on the network nightly news, have a far longer shelf life. For an online news consumer searching for specific information, that's a cornucopia of concentrated content. In the new media world, it looks like the networks are better positioned to win.
ANDREW TYNDALL: We can even mix and match. We can get two from ABC, two from CBS, two from NBC, maybe, maybe some from the BBC or PBS or - or who knows? - the audio-visual outlet that the New York Times is going to provide. We're going to be able to assemble our own half-hour nightly newscasts, using these individual packages as the building blocks.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: But in a future where we're all our own anchors, what will be the point of the nightly newscast? Well, according to Jay Rosen, it's a fabulous way to publicize your website.
JAY ROSEN: I would redefine the newscast as our way of driving people to the Web for the in-depth and really diverse coverage we provide. I would take the 1,500 [LAUGHS] people who work for CBS News and I would tell them, "You all work for the website now."
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Last year when ABC launched its digital service, ABC News Now, it created the means to leapfrog over cable directly onto the Net. Recently, CBS created Public Eye, essentially a blog run by journalists who will take questions and criticisms from the CBS audience to the CBS news staff and come back with answers. Transparency. Accountability. Guest bloggers. If, as the saying goes, the traditional voice of network news is the voice of God, then after 50 long years it seems the gods have decided to come down to earth and walk among us, at last. [MUSIC UP AND UNDER]
BOB GARFIELD: Coming up, video games with the power to persuade, and the most powerful man in media you've probably never heard of.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: This is On the Media from NPR. (FUNDING CREDITS)
copyright 2005 WNYC Radio
Produced by WNYC Studios