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| Ex-CNNer
Kaplan rejoining ABC News Famously tangled with Dobbs before his ouster Rick Kaplan, the news executive who tangled with Lou Dobbs during his three-year run as head of CNN, has found a permanent new home at ABC News. Kaplan, who spent 18 years at ABC in his pre-CNN days, will be one of three senior vice presidents in charge of day-to-day news operations. His turf will include "World News Tonight with Peter Jennings," "Nightline" and "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." Kaplan's counterparts are Phyllis McGrady, who oversees "Good Morning America" and primetime news programming, and Paul Slavin, who will graduate to chief of worldwide news gathering as soon as ABC names someone to replace him as producer of "World News Tonight." Kaplan has been back at ABC News on a temporary basis since February, when he signed on to oversee the network's war coverage. Since leaving CNN, he had been filling his days teaching at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. CNN fired Kaplan in August 2000, blaming him for the network's falling ratings and for his inability to get along with financial news star Lou Dobbs. Dobbs left the network in a huff in mid-1999 to launch the web site Space.com. He has since returned. Kaplan's strategy at CNN was to wean the network off its dependence on breaking news by developing "appointment programming" that would generate consistent ratings even during news lulls. The strategy was widely deemed a failure, and Kaplan's signature show, "NewsStand," was canceled. Ironically, it was by pursuing a similar strategy that Fox News has overtaken CNN in the ratings race, the difference being that Fox draws its audience with opinionated talk and flashy execution, not newsmagazines. ABC News stumbled somewhat in its early coverage of the Iraq war. On the night air strikes on Baghdad commenced, ABC was the last network to go live with the news, apparently because Peter Jennings had already left the studio. Later that night, the network notified affiliates that it would be sticking with round-the-clock war coverage throughout the night. Unfortunately, no one told Jennings, who signed off at 11 p.m., leaving many stations with dead air. June 10, 2003© 2003 Media Life Click
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