News With Views

New York Times ^ | 4/20/2005 | DON HEWITT

[thoughtomator]

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR News With Views By DON HEWITT

Published: April 20, 2005

BECAUSE all three of the networks' early-evening newscasts, as good as they are, generally follow an hour or so of local news and are fed into households already saturated with news from CNN, Fox or MSNBC (which they didn't use to be), and because the adults the broadcasts are aimed at probably know all they want to know from the all-news radio station they listened to in the car coming home from work, and because their children are more interested in the Internet than they are in television and spend more time playing video games than watching videotape, the networks are thinking of ways to overhaul how they do news.

So, as someone who was privileged to be the executive producer of the first 30-minute network newscast in 1960, let me suggest that what's missing from network newscasts is opinion - the kind of personalized, highly subjective material that people turn to the commentary page of their newspaper for after they've finished with the front page.

Why couldn't a newscast follow a newspaper's example and include commentary by bright, attractive articulate men and women of various political and ideological persuasions, with whom viewers - like newspaper readers - can agree, disagree, laugh at, sneer at or argue about when the newscast is over? Jim Lehrer regularly includes a diversity of opinion in his "NewsHour" on PBS; CBS, NBC and ABC aren't reluctant to offer opinion in their Sunday talk shows, though they shy away from it on their newscasts.

Sure, traditions like the one CBS's Walter Cronkite and NBC's Chet Huntley and David Brinkley pioneered more than 40 years ago die hard but they do sometimes die. To keep them going, the broadcasts need something new. We were lucky enough to hit on something fresh at CBS in 1968 with "60 Minutes," which included a great attention-getter called "Point Counterpoint" that was later supplanted by an equally popular closing feature called "A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney."

Now, if the networks are looking for ways to re-energize their news, the formula may be as simple as taking a page from the "60 Minutes" book and offering some audacious commentary.

Don Hewitt is the creator of "60 Minutes."

[thoughtomator]

I got a really good laugh out of this one! If I want "highly subjective material" I can just look at the Times' front page... for example, today's promotion of unknown, fringe crackpot dissenters of the choice of Ratzinger as pope to major quotables and story subjects.

[trisham]

No kidding. Could the NYT be any more clueless?

[68skylark]

My first instinct is to mock this column. But on further reflection, I gotta give Don Hewitt credit for realizing things his colleagues don't.

Traditional network TV news is fading away -- he's right about that. It needs some new, non-traditional ideas. They could try being honest about presenting liberal opinions, and maybe even let someone on offer a conservative opinion once in awhile.

If they could do this with good cheer and good style (and pretty, perky presenters wouldn't hurt), I might even watch again.

[Colonel_Flagg]

let me suggest that what's missing from network newscasts is opinion

< blink >

Wrong, Don. Opinion has never been missing from network newscasts. What network newscasts don't have is opinion labeled as such, which is why conservatives have such a great problem with network news.

[OESY]

OMG, I didn't know the Internet was just for kids. Thank goodness for the New York Times, a reliable foil to reality.