ABC News helped to bring broadcast journalism fully into
the television age. It was one of the “big three” networks
prior to the growth of cable and satellite TV. Yet when
ABC began, CBS and NBC already were broadcast news
institutions. ABC’s achievements were not so much in the
reporting of news events, which CBS and NBC also covered. ABC surpassed its rivals with concepts that loosened
TV news from newspaper influences. Journalism became a
television experience for viewers.
ABC’s signatures were the daily broadcasts of “The
World News Tonight” and “Nightline.” Both programs were
major innovations. ABC was also the first major broadcast
organization to recognize the importance of local TV news.
Local stations owned by ABC challenged more traditional
CBS-NBC newscasting designs.
ABC had to fight to become a major network. Its maverick approach traced to its star-crossed inception. In 1926,
NBC had fortified the strongest national radio network. To
limit newcomer CBS, NBC formed a third network called
the Blue Network. CBS and others protested NBC’s ownership of two systems. The FCC concurred and, in 1943,
forced NBC to sell the Blue Network. It went to Edward
Nobel, the founder of Lifesavers candies. NBC stripped the
Blue Network of its assets and kept its few popular entertainers. What was left of the Blue Network became ABC.
The rudiments of ABC News were news commentary
programs on radio. Popular during the 1930s, news commentaries faded during World War II. CBS and NBC introduced regular newscasts. ABC became a haven for famed
commentators whose programs had been dropped by CBS
and NBC. The best known of these personalities was Walter
Winchell. Others were Drew Pearson and Gabriel Heatter.
The most venerable was Paul Harvey, whose ABC commentaries began in 1950 and continued for well over a half
century.
ABC television began in 1948. For the next twenty years,
the expense of TV broadcasting kept ABC close to collapse.
In 1953, Nobel sold ABC to Leonard Goldenson. In 1955,
assistance came from the Disney corporation, and ABC
managed to stay afloat through the black-and-white era of
television. Financial problems reached crisis proportions
again when television began its conversion to color. In 1965,
Goldenson attempted to sell ABC to International Telegraph
and Telephone (ITT), a large conglomerate that during the
1960s owned many businesses. Fearful of mounting debt,
ITT backed out. Three years later, ABC barely survived a
hostile takeover attempt by the reclusive billionaire Howard
Hughes.
Lacking resources, ABC News was a marginal operation. In 1954, it provided the only live coverage of the
Army-McCarthy hearings, but largely because it had no
daytime programming during the period when the hearings
occurred.
When CBS and NBC initiated nightly news programs
in 1948, it became a problem for ABC. ABC did not follow until 1954. While CBS and NBC had noted journalists,
ABC became a revolving door for newscasters. The first
seven were John Daly, Murphy Martin, John Lawrence,
William Sheehan, Alex Drier, Ron Cochran, and Bill
Shadel. In 1961, Goldenson hired President Dwight Eisenhower’s acclaimed press secretary James Hagerty to be the
first official president of ABC News, but Hagerty struggled.
A low point came in 1968 when ABC could not afford full
coverage of that year’s political conventions.
Fortunes changed later in 1968 when Al Primo became
news director of the ABC-owned New York station WABC.
Primo believed that TV news was too serious, dominated
by elder stentorian newscasters who sat in studios and read
worded accounts. CBS’s Walter Cronkite, the period’s
most popular newscaster, best personified this “Olympian”
approach.
Primo took advantage of new technology such as videotape and mobile cameras. He showcased a large team of oncamera anchors and roving reporters who communicated
news while posing as the viewers’ friends. This concept,
known as “Eyewitness News,” moved WABC from last to
first place in audience ratings. The idea then was introduced
at ABC’s other owned stations that included WLS in Chicago, KABC in Los Angeles, WXYZ in Detroit, and KGO
in San Francisco. These stations, too, became Number 1 in
the ratings.
“Eyewitness News” was a turning point both for ABC
and for television news. The five ABC stations became one
of the largest profit centers in the history of broadcasting.
During the 1970s, these five stations generated more than
$1 billion in profits. By 1975, almost every other ABC,
CBS, and NBC local affiliate abandoned the “Olympian”
style in favor of ABC’s freer and more energetic design.
“Eyewitness News” facilitated the first regular “live shots”
and other applications of “electronic newsgathering” technology. The concept later served as a model for reporting on
CNN and ABC’s cable sports channel ESPN.
Professional uncertainty testified to the ferment ABC
had stirred. Fearful that “Eyewitness News” would move
from local to network news, Cronkite joined with many
CBS and NBC News veterans in denouncing conversational
language, reporter involvement, and friendly newscasting
as “show business” techniques. Critics further felt that
video undermined the flow of information that came from
newscasters’ written scripts. Among those who defended
ABC was media theorist Marshall McLuhan, who felt that
“Eyewitness News” at last had proven television’s potential for “shared” news communication. McLuhan asserted, no
doubt prematurely, that written scripts and printed news
were obsolete.
Despite thriving from its initiatives in local TV news,
ABC still was mired in the last-place ratings of its national
newscast, the “ABC Evening News.” The ABC news division resisted attempts to change the broadcast’s “Olympian”
format. Former CBS reporter Harry Reasoner was ABC’s
main anchor between 1970 and 1977. Competing against
CBS and Cronkite, Reasoner’s ratings were small.
In 1976, low ratings precipitated an ill-fated display of
ABC ingenuity. ABC hired NBC “Today Show” host Barbara Walters as Reasoner’s co-anchor. Although this gave
ABC the distinction of introducing the first female network
main anchor, Walters was removed after one year. Walters
and Reasoner disliked each other and viewers, who sensed
that fact, were uncomfortable.
Success finally came with ABC’s most-noted unconventional move. In 1977, ABC named Roone Arledge, the
mastermind of ABC Sports, as president of the network
news division. Again, critics denounced ABC’s debasement
of news traditions. The hiring of Arledge marked the first
time in journalism that a person with no news background
was placed in charge of a major news organization. Nevertheless, borrowing some “Eyewitness News” techniques but
mostly those from “The Wide World of Sports,” Arledge
transformed network news.
Arledge ended the “ABC Evening News.” In 1978 he
launched a new nightly newscast called “The World News
Tonight.” Anchored by Frank Reynolds until Reynold’s
death in 1983, and then by Peter Jennings until 2005, “The
World News Tonight” featured co-anchors from different
locations around the world. They included Max Robinson,
the first African American network newscaster. Seen for
the first time in network news were regular “live” reports,
extensive visualization, animations, digital graphics, and
thematic music.
ABC’s next breakthrough came in 1980. Arledge persuaded ABC affiliates to permit an extra half-hour of network news late at night for coverage of the Iran Hostage
Crisis. Anchored by Ted Koppel, these reports were permanently established as the broadcast “Nightline.” By this
time, a third broadcast begun in 1976, “Good Morning
America,” became a major showcase for ABC’s expanded
news reporting.
After Cronkite’s retirement in 1981, ABC became the
leader in broadcast news. In addition to its expansion in
television, ABC was the only national broadcast entity to
build up operations in radio news. Most leading local news
radio stations became an ABC News affiliate.
Acclaimed journalism and public affairs figures who in
the 1980s joined Arledge were David Brinkley, pioneer of
NBC’s “Huntley-Brinkley Report”; Pierre Salinger, former
press secretary to President John Kennedy; and Carl Bernstein, whose 1972 exposés in the Washington Post exposed
the Watergate scandal. Others who identified ABC News
were correspondents Sam Donaldson, Brit Hume, John
McWethy, Cokie Roberts, and Bettina Gregory; and analyst
George Will.
ABC News had ascended when cable and satellite delivery first appeared. In 1982, ABC was alone among the three
original broadcast networks in launching a twenty-fourhour all-news channel on cable TV. This venture, called the
Satellite News Channel, had been preceded by Ted Turner’s
Cable News Network. Because cable systems already provided CNN, SNC collapsed. Although from SNC emerged
ABC’s twenty-four-hour all-sports channel ESPN, ABC’s
“The World News Tonight” and other news programs were
overshadowed by CNN.
In 1985, Goldenson sold ABC to Capital Cities, a local
station group that in the 1970s grew from obscurity from
profits gained by applying ABC’s revisions in local TV
news. To meet plummeting ABC ratings and revenues
caused by cable competition, Capital Cities cut budgets for
ABC News. Several of ABC’s thirty foreign and domestic bureaus were closed. However, the downsizing of ABC
News was less severe than at CBS and NBC, where hundreds of journalists lost their jobs.
More reductions came in 1997. Capital Cities was
absorbed by Disney, the corporation that had saved ABC
forty-two years earlier. Disney shored news operations
in New York and Washington but eliminated remaining
bureaus.
Despite decline, ABC remained prominent in broadcast news. Appointed as anchor in 1983, Peter Jennings
headed “The World News Tonight” until his death in 2005.
Jennings’s tenure was one of the longest of any broadcast
journalist. ABC’s most celebrated news figure was Arledge.
Arledge’s death in 2002 generated worldwide news. Arledge
was eulogized for epitomizing ABC’s tradition of fighting
the establishment and coming out ahead.
Further Reading
Craig Allen, News Is People: The Rise of Local TV News and the
Fall of News from New York. Ames: Iowa State Press, 2001.
Ken Auletta, Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their
Way. New York: Random House, 1991.
James B. Duffy, The Wind in the Trees. New York: Endimiyon,
1997.
Marc Gunther, The House that Roone Built: The Inside Story of
ABC News. Boston: Little, Brown, 1994.
Leonard H. Goldenson, Beating the Odds: The Untold Story
Behind the Rise of ABC. New York: Scribner, 1991.
Sterling Quinlan, Inside ABC: American Broadcasting Company’s Rise to Power. New York : Hastings House, 1979.
Craig Allen