CNN's Brown regards his career with love, loathing
By Gail Shister
Knight Ridder News Service
Aaron Brown loves his work. He hates his job.
CNN
"The work is reporting and anchoring, which I love to do," says Brown, CNN's quirky "NewsNight" host and "go to" anchor star. "The job is being an anchorman."
Aaron Brown of CNN says his key relationship is with viewers.
Explain, please.
The job "means dealing with the press, and dealing with an overemphasis on anchors generally. It's complicated. When you're out there as a public person, it's not always easy for someone like me.
"Peter (Jennings) and Tom (Brokaw) and Dan (Rather) are out there. Because of the nature of the business, sometimes people love you and sometimes they don't love you. No one likes bad things said about them, but I get it."
Brown, 54, who makes about $2 million a year, has taken some nasty shots for his low-key style that frequently includes long — for TV — pauses and stream-of-consciousness monologues.
"The criticism bothers me, but I really believe my essential relationship is with the viewers. I believe in that relationship, and I'm comfortable with it."
He describes his laconic style as "conversational more than classically authoritative."
When the war with Iraq began last month, Brown moved from New York to CNN's Atlanta headquarters. After several weeks of on-air marathons, he now anchors "NewsNight," seen from 4 to 8 p.m. in Hawai'i.
CNN's strong reportage from the field is helping it resurrect its identity as a credible hard-news organization after more than a year of management turmoil and questionable programming moves. (Two words: Connie Chung.)
"I think everybody gets caught up in the competitive stuff," Brown says. "This is what we do. We've done a terrific job in establishing exactly what we are — a very solid, independent, reporters' network."
Still, it's not reporters who get the big bucks and big perks, and Brown knows it.
"Anchors get much more credit than they ought to and much more blame than is reasonable. TV is a more complicated piece of business, in ways that are unreal unless you actually live through it. Then it becomes surreal."
Not that Brown's complaining. "I'm a big boy. I'm not whining. It's never been a burden to me."
War-boosted ratings falling
Although the war has dramatically boosted cable and broadcast news ratings, numbers are on the decline.
From March 19, when the war began, through last Tuesday, Fox News Channel, CNN and MSNBC together averaged 7.4 million viewers — up from 1.5 million in pre-war 2003, according to Nielsen Media Research.
Leader Fox News had 3.3 million viewers — an increase of more than 2.5 million from its 2003 average. In the figures for March 31-April 7, it slipped to 3.1 million, down from 3.4 million the week of March 17.
CNN averaged 2.7 million viewers through Tuesday, five times its 2003 figure. It had 2.4 million the week of March 31, a drop of 500,000 from the first week of the war.
MSNBC had 1.4 million viewers through Tuesday, an increase of more than 1.1 million from its '03 average. Most recently, it had 1.3 million.
Combined, cable news' average viewership dropped 900,000 since the first week of the war.
On the broadcast front, audiences for the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts fell from 32.8 million to 27.9 million.
No surprise, given the surge in cable. FNC and MSNBC didn't even exist during the '91 Gulf War. They both were launched in 1996.
Top-rated "NBC Nightly News," with Tom Brokaw, went from 13.2 million to 10.8 million; Peter Jennings' "ABC World News Tonight" from 10.6 million to 9.8 million; and Dan Rather's "CBS Evening News" from 9.0 million to 7.3 million.
