Associated Press
Dan Rather has no special plans for today, the 20th anniversary of the day he replaced Walter Cronkite as anchor of the "CBS Evening News."
He’ll read the news. The landmark will probably pass unnoticed, just like the night last winter when Rather surpassed the longevity record of the television icon, whom many considered irreplaceable.
Twenty years — an impressive run. But Rather’s not alone.
His two chief competitors — Tom Brokaw on NBC and Peter Jennings on ABC — have been in their jobs almost as long. Both took over as sole evening news anchors in September 1983.
All three are fixtures on TV sets every weeknight and during every major news story. Models of durability in a transient medium, they have stood steady as the world, and the world of TV news, changed around them.
Reaganomics, the fall of communism, the Gulf War, two O.J. Simpson trials, the impeachment of President Clinton and the muddled election of his successor — they’ve chronicled it all.
CNN was in its infancy when they started, the Internet just a dream. The evening news was a ritual for millions more people than it is now, a time when consumers can retrieve news virtually on demand from their TV sets and computers.
"To some extent, they may be taken for granted," said Joseph Angotti, dean of the broadcast program at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. "When one of them leaves, they will be missed more than most people would be ready to admit now."
In presidential lifespans, Brokaw and Jennings would be in the middle of their fifth terms, Rather starting his sixth. Each has spent years at the top of the ratings, years in the middle and years at the bottom.
The current pecking order: Brokaw, Jennings, Rather.
Tom Brokaw
While attending January’s Orange Bowl football game in Miami with his son-in-law, Brokaw was barely able to walk around the stadium. People constantly approached him for a handshake. Few were interested in the news.
Instead, most told Brokaw how much his best-selling book about those who fought World War II and their families, "The Greatest Generation," meant to them.
The "NBC Nightly News"’ ascendancy to the top of the ratings in 1997 predates "The Greatest Generation," but the book’s popularity seems to have cemented the status of the broadcast and Brokaw.
No longer does anyone consider the South Dakota native a lightweight alternative to a hard-charging Rather and urbane, sophisticated Jennings.
His broadcast sets the evening news pace, with competitors either trying to emulate or react against it. NBC will go into depth on the day’s big story, then often move into more service-oriented fare during the show’s back end. In newspaper terms, it spends less time on news that would play inside the front section than on stories that would be on the cover of other sections.
"The world has changed," said Brokaw, 61, who co-anchored "Nightly News" with Roger Mudd for a year before going it alone. "It’s a lot more interested in developments that have to do with the workplace, gender, family and culture."
Peter Jennings
NBC’s current run at the top ended the eight-year reign of Jennings’ "World News Tonight."
Jennings, a 62-year-old Canadian and former ABC London correspondent, routinely reports more international news than his competitors, as befits his show’s title. "World News Tonight" is more comparable to The New York Times than most TV news shows, with a focus on education, religion, the arts and technology.
ABC ran against the grain of two TV trends during the late 1990s: decreased attention to international news and increased emphasis on tabloid topics.
Jennings actually has the longest evening news tenure of the trio. He was host for nearly three years in the 1960s when Cronkite and NBC’s Huntley-Brinkley team dominated, then was part of a multi-anchor format from 1978 to 1983.
A restless intellectual, he steers ABC toward sprawling topics, including its millennium coverage and an upcoming book-TV project on the United States seen through an outsider’s eyes. He believes it’s important that he and his competitors have a grounding as reporters.
"My greatest fear," he said, "is that something is going to happen and I’m going to be thrown on the air at a moment’s notice and talk about something about which I don’t know anything."
Dan Rather
Rather, 69, took over from "the most trusted man in America" in 1981 against the advice of many, including his family. He saw what they meant a few months after his succession when a well-known CBS personality — he won’t reveal who — made it a point to stand outside his office door during a downturn in the ratings and loudly say that Rather was through.
"I thought everybody within CBS would be pulling for me," he said, "and that turned out not to be the case."
Despite the backbiting, Rather spent most of the 1980s as king of the network news hill. Eventually, years of budget cuts and format fiddling took its toll. Rather endured a troubled two-year pairing with Connie Chung that ended in 1995.
He has lasted as anchor through the regimes of eight CBS News presidents and nine "CBS Evening News" executive producers.
"I am the original survivor," he said.
Partly as a result of that turmoil, his broadcast has a less distinct identity than the others. An old-school newsman with direct lineage to CBS’ glory days, Rather’s mantra is "hard news."
Rather’s tightly wound persona occasionally gets him into trouble, like on the 1987 day he stormed off the set to protest a late tennis match that delayed the news.
He sometimes seems like the last vestige of another era. Yet while the CBS "Early Show" has soiled its reputation with endless promotional segments on "Survivor," Rather’s "CBS Evening News" has stood in dignified contrast.
And one arrow is pointing in the right direction. After years as a distant third in the ratings, CBS has crept up to the point where it passed ABC during a few weeks the last two months.
Changed audience
Many of the people who once could be counted on to relax in front of the TV for a summary of the day’s events aren’t home now when Brokaw, Jennings and Rather take to the air. It hasn’t helped that their broadcasts now usually air at 6:30 p.m., instead of 7 p.m., and in some cities even earlier.
"We’ve lost particularly what some people describe as a blue-chip audience," Jennings said. "I have several friends, for example, in banking. They never see the evening news anymore because they just work longer."
The steady stream of prescription-drug ads aimed at older Americans is a clear indication who the typical evening-news viewer is. And in television, old is unhip.
For many Americans, the first 20 minutes of the "Today" show is more of a communal news experience now than the evening news. CNN, CNBC and other cable channels exist for those who can’t wait until the end of the day.
The evening news was seen regularly in just under 30 million homes the year Rather started, according to Nielsen Media Research. This year, it’s at 23 million. Nearly three-quarters of TVs on at that hour two decades ago were tuned to network news; now only 44 percent — a minority — are showing Brokaw, Jennings or Rather.
That change in status is noticeable at their news divisions, Rather said.
"We’ve gone from being the number one priority to no better than fourth or fifth," he said. "I think this is a mistake. I don’t agree with it, but it’s part of the reality."
The shows have made adjustments; each has added elements of newsmagazines and doesn’t try to be comprehensive.
But is it enough?
"The guys who understand the least the kind of changes that have gone on in the world of information are the network anchors," said Michael Wolff, a New York magazine media columnist. "First of all, they’re incredible blowhards. They have for so long been deified and given a wide berth. All of their measures of job performance each year grow weaker and weaker and weaker. Yet they are not held accountable."
It has become trendy to speculate that the evening news programs might have a limited life. One day, a major network might decide it’s better to let local affiliates use the time slot for local news, a game show or a "Friends" rerun.
Still, roughly 30 million people watch the three shows each night. The size of the network prime-time audience has dropped more sharply than it has for the news.
"There will always be a legitimate place for the evening news," Jennings said. "Will some network feel that it’s no longer important to its network status to . . . have an evening news program? Sure. But I don’t think it will be this one."
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