..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..R.J. Matson
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Michael Wilmington

While struggling in vain last week to avoid the canonization of departing NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw, I was reminded of the old Dan Hicks ditty, “How Can I Miss You (When You Won't Go Away)?” The fair-haired boy from South Dakota might have made more talk-show appearances in November than Jude Law, and few of the interviews were more enlightening than the biographical information found on the dust jackets of his books.

As much as CBS tried to steal some of the competition’s thunder with its suspiciously timed announcement of Dan Rather’s pre-ordained retirement, that news barely made a dent in the demand for Brokaw’s time. Not that he was complaining … sales of “The Greatest Generation” and “The Greatest Generation Speaks” must have gone through the roof.

I don’t recall how much was made of Walter Cronkite’s mandated departure from CBS News, in 1981, after he turned 65. Considering how many fewer cable news networks and talk shows that existed at the dawn of the 500-channel universe, the reaction likely was muted, by comparison to Brokaw’s goodbye tour. Odds are, when Uncle Walter’s 73-year-old successor is put out to pasture next year, the media splash will swamp everything in its wake.

Over at ABC, it’s unlikely 66-year-old Peter Jennings will be accorded the same hosannas, if only because he was born in Toronto and still has trouble pronouncing “about,” like a real American. Perhaps, if he’d moonlighted as a member of the Saturday Night Live troupe -- as most other Canadians living in New York have, over the last 20 years -- Jennings would be accorded flavor-of-the-mouth status, too.

By that time, though, the audience for the networks’ nightly news shows could be as marginal as that for their Saturday morning cartoon shows. The average viewer will be older than the anchors he or she is watching.

The numbers don’t lie:

During the final full week of Brokaw’s tenure at NBC, Nightly News won the evening news ratings race by averaging 11.3 million households (representing 7.7 ratings points, and a 15 percent share of televisions actually in use). ABC's World News Tonight garnered 10.1 million viewers (6.9/13) and The CBS Evening News drew 7.9 million viewers (5.4/10). For his farewell appearance last Wednesday, Brokaw pulled an audience larger than those of rivals Jennings and Rather, combined.

Sounds impressive, unless one considers that the combined audience of the network news shows in 2004 likely will be, on average, about 26 million viewers, which is down from more than 33 million in 1994 and almost 37 million in the 1991-92 season. The three broadcast networks’ share of actual viewers in the half-hour timeslot given over to the national news, according to Nielsen Media Research, has plummeted from 75 percent in 1970-71, to 52 percent in 1994-95, and it now stands at about 36 percent.

This precipitous drop can be blamed on everything from the Internet and competition from cable networks, to a general lack of interest in news that also doesn’t include school-lunch menus and high-school sports reports.

The biggest problem, though, simply could come from the scheduling of the shows themselves. In the Midwest and mountain states, the evening news programs are presented at a time when most interested adults are stuck in traffic, or are picking up the kids from soccer practice. On the west and east coasts, the last thing most commuters want to do at 6:30 p.m. is turn on the news and listen to the lies of politicians, economists and celebrities.

Those fortunate enough to be able to work near home or telecommute via the Internet, likely already have followed the news cycle from the moment they turned on their computers or cable TV in the morning. If they subscribe to a decent newspaper, they’ve probably also been made aware of the same human-interest features haphazardly reported by the diminished corps of network correspondents.

(Last Monday, for instance, Jennings’ show aired from Las Vegas. Nothing was revealed in the centerpiece feature on the city’s spectacular growth spurt that hasn’t already been reported in a couple hundred other places over the last 10 years. Even so, the anchor still managed to botch the title of the book -- “Neon Metropolis,” not “Neon Capital” -- whose author was being interviewed as a primary source of information.)

It has been argued that viewers in the so-called “red states” have begun shifting their allegiances away from the networks, which are considered too liberal for their tastes, to more conservative services. Even considering Rather’s recent faux pas, one must harbor a rather broad view of the concept to consider the network news shows liberal, in any real political sense. Unless one has a problem with the basic freedoms spelled out in the Bill of Rights and Constitution, these newscasts simply can’t be described as anything but mainstream, conformist and overly deliberate in their approach to radical ideas from the left or right.

Following last month’s hotly contested election, there even was a renewal of interest in extending the length of the nightly news shows to an hour, and possibly insinuating them into prime-time schedules. Of course, there also was some talk of finding a way to clone Jon Stewart.

(As long as local stations are able to make more money with syndicated game shows, entertainment magazines and reruns in those fringe timeslots, however, the idea of adding more than 30 seconds to the newscast is a non-starter. There’s just too much money at stake at the affiliate level. After all, prime-time newsmagazines are hardly setting the world on fire, anymore, and even a chart-topping 60 Minutes can’t command the same advertising bucks as a popular sitcom, such as Friends or Seinfeld.)

And, forget about the rhetorical power of the national news pulpit. It’s become difficult for some correspondents even to get the attention of the President during his infrequent news conferences. George W would rather throw a bone to an insignificant news outlet, than risk going toe-to-toe with one of the big shot reporters in White House press pool.

It’s been a long time since Cronkite bucked the Johnson administration, by publicly changing his opinion on the wisdom of the Vietnam War. After the “most trusted man in America” began reporting the facts as his correspondents saw them on the ground, instead of rehashing Pentagon propaganda, it’s said that LBJ lost his enthusiasm for running for re-election in 1968. In the era of Brokaw, Jennings and Rather, all presidential candidates -- with the possible exception of Ross Perot -- have been given a free pass on anything more substantial than gossip about their character … which, then, could be blown up and distorted into resembling a scandal or crisis.

If anything, the news shows and network newsmagazines more closely resemble the nightmare vision of Paddy Chayefsky and Sidney Lumet’s tragically prophetic Network. Everything envisioned in Howard Beale’s nightly newscast has been tested on one or more of the national networks. Likewise, a decade later, James L. Brooks’ Broadcast News would provide both a mirror and a blueprint for everything that eventually would transpire in newsrooms that didn’t border on the completely insane.

Not that the print media is any less guilty of inflating the egos of anchors and news executives, who get far more credit for what‘s reported on their newscasts than they actually deserve. Unless a segment producer really cuts corners and blows the story, the big-name anchors and reporters are only too willing to take full credit for a piece aired on the nightly news or 60 Minutes. And, they rarely get called on it.

Every time an anchor’s contract comes due, media columnists will dutifully report just how much these men -- women, too, but only if they host a prime-time newsmagazine -- mean to their respective news operations, and what a great tragedy it would be to find them in an unemployment line. After the deal is closed, however, these same writers will pretend to be appalled by the obscene amount of cash the anchors will receive for their 20 minutes of news reading each night.

It couldn’t have escaped many viewers’ attention over the last 20-odd years that the Big 3 anchors all were multimillionaires and, thus, were treated like kings wherever they went, especially in their Manhattan and Hamptons backyards. They ate, drank and partied in the same restaurants and bars frequented by the politicians and business executives they covered; vacationed in the same exotic destinations frequented by monarchs and movie moguls; were transported to work and assignments in limousines; and wouldn’t be caught dead in Wal-Mart, even to report on the pitiful work conditions endured by its employees.

Print reporters generally cut the anchors a break, because they were seen as titans of their industry and had plenty of time on their hands to return requests for phone interviews. These men were suave, articulate and rarely forgot the name or voice of an influential columnist or critic. You never got the feeling that Diane Sawyer cared much for ink-stained wretches, but Rather was well known for calling reporters out of the blue, just to shoot the breeze.

The same newspapers that buried the bad news about their own circulation woes, treated the Nielsen wars as if they were horse races -- or Monday morning box-office stats -- and the numbers actually meant something to their readers. Little notice was given to audience shrinkage, though, until the trend became too obvious to ignore. That same sort of idolatry now is being bestowed on the hosts of cable news shows, some of whose audiences can be counted on the fingers of two hands (Dennis Miller, for example, and the canceled John McEnroe and Phil Donahue). They received far more ink than their ratings ever warranted.

Consider for a moment the fact that CNN's highest-rated show, Larry King Live, averages a mere 1.5 million households, out of a potential 105.5 million. His show dropped from No. 7 in the cable news show ratings, in October, to No. 12 last month. (The O’Reilly Factor and Hannity & Colmes top the list with about 2.7 million viewers.) Michael Eisner recently admitted, in courtroom testimony, that he and Disney’s top publicist conspired to use King as a shill for their lies about harmony among the top ranks of executives at the company.

Even so, King, O’Reilly and some of their other cable compatriots are treated like potentates on the talk-show circuit, albeit minor ones. In another few years, perhaps, they’ll be accorded the same treatment as Brokaw, who we now revere as an avid fisherman and outdoorsman, a loving husband and father, and someone who is extremely proud of the fact that he was handed interviews with several important world leaders, no doubt on a platinum platter.

Let’s hope Brokaw -- by all meaningful indications, a very decent guy -- remains as vital, productive and beloved in his remaining years, as Cronkite has been. Ditto, Rather. Let’s hope, too, that they both resist the temptation to run for public office or accept a commentator gig on professional football broadcasts (one Rush Limbaugh is all any of us need in a lifetime).

Meanwhile, while kudus are being handed out, it should be noted that the reigning kingpin of network television also happens to be the current grand poobah of Hollywood: Jerry Bruckheimer. Often described (somewhat inaccurately) as being critic-proof, Bruckheimer not only has held the No. 1 position at the box office for the past three weeks, with National Treasure, but he also can boost of being responsible for 6 of the top 20 prime-time shows during the last week on November.

His lowest-rated show, No. 18 CSI: New York, nearly doubled the average audience for Brokaw’s newscasts during the same period. The combined number of viewers of his No. 8 Cold Case and No. 6 Without a Trace -- forget about all the other CSI episodes -- nearly equaled the entire audience for all three national newscasts.

Don’t be surprised if his King Arthur, which arrives in DVD on Dec. 21, doesn’t find its way to the top of the video charts, as well. Even though it tanked at the box office here, the epic re-telling of the Excalibur legend did very well overseas, and is just the kind of movie that defies expectations when it reaches the local Blockbuster.

If NBC gave Brokaw the equivalent of a gold Rolex upon his retirement, CBS might want to consider handing Bruckheimer the deed for Big Ben … if he doesn’t already own it.

- by Gary Dretzka

December 8, 2004