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ABC and Koppel?
Will he quit? What would fill his slot? We ponder.
By Thomas J. Watson
Okay, so David Letterman is staying with CBS, having turned down ABC's offer to move his late-night talk show to that network, but the melodrama is far from over.
Where does all this leave ABC, "Nightline" and its anchor, the highly regarded network newsman Ted Koppel?
Koppel, whose show would have been bumped to make room for Letterman, has told his ABC/Disney corporate bosses that he wants a long-term commitment for "Nightline," but those bosses so far have been artfully dodging his demands.
Unless that commitment comes soon, Koppel is expected to leave the network, possibly to join one of the cable news operations.
If "Nightline's" days are numbered, where does this leave ABC in late night?
Treading deep water, it would appear.
At first glance, the network, which has stated it wants a younger-skewing audience than the one "Nightline" delivers, seems to have two options.
Neither would reap immediate rewards.
The first option is to develop its own late-night talk show to go head-to-head against Letterman and Leno on NBC.
But television history is littered with short-lived talk shows, both on networks and in syndication. There's no reason to believe something like this would work, certainly not in the short term.
The other option is to strip off-prime reruns of drama series, similar to the way CBS did years ago, prior to Letterman, when it offered "Crime Time After Prime Time."
But that would be an iffy venture. The TV landscape has changed during the past decade.
Moreover, most of the successful drama series have already been committed for off-network runs, either in syndication or on cable.
What would ABC find available to put there?
As for Koppel, should he join one of the cable news networks, he would find that they, too, have become embroiled in ratings battles that have seen hard news coverage lose ground to softer, personality-driven news shows.
CNN, long the cable news network champ, has found itself since January finishing second to rival Fox News Channel, with third-place MSNBC also showing signs of growth.
New CNN chairman Walter Isaacson has pledged to return CNN to its former leadership position. But to do so he's choosing to emulate the competition by building a schedule around personalities, rather than the serious news and analysis of the sort Koppel is strong in.
Reese Schonfeld, former newsman and original co-founder and first president of CNN, says that until now each of the three cable news networks has had a style uniquely its own.
"I used to say that CNN gets the CEOs, MSNBC gets the CFOs, and Fox gets the UFOs.
"Fox has always been a little quirky, a lot more fun than CNN. CNN has never been fun. It has always let the news itself be the star."
The only real star-personality on CNN has been Larry King, whose 9 p.m. interview show has sustained the network in recent months in primetime.
But all that is changing.
Among Isaacson’s recent hires are Aaron Brown and Connie Chung, both from Koppel’s ABC News, Paula Zahn from Fox, and–behind the scenes–executive Teya Ryan from recently revitalized Headline News.
Insiders expect CNN content to also get a face-lift, becoming, as Schonfeld would say, "more fun."
It will also become more entertaining to go against Fox.
"Fox is like talk radio, only on television," says John Spiropoulos, director of media analysis for MPG-US.
"They know they are competing with the entertainment networks for a portion of their audience, so they put on shows."
Among the personalities currently winning viewers for Fox News Channel are Brit Hume, Neil Cavato, Sean Hannity, Alan Colmes, and the often-controversial Bill O’Reilly.
Would Ted Koppel be happy joining either the CNN or Fox stables?
It would seem unlikely.
In the end, if Koppel leaves, the likely losers will be the viewers and the advertisers who have made "Nightline" a success for 22 years.
But ABC would also lose.
The program has consistently done well, this season averaging a 1.6 rating among adults 18-49, only 0.2 off Letterman’s 1.8. More importantly, it often draws an upscale audience that no one else delivers.
And that leaves ABC in something of a fix.
The surprise ending to the Letterman imbroglio could be a very public reconciliation between Koppel and Disney/ABC suits, with Koppel enjoying some of the leverage Letterman exercised over the recent weeks in his negotiations.
March 13, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
-Thomas J. Watson is a Los Angeles writer and a contributor to Media Life.
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