Posted on 11/11/2006 2:42:42 PM PST by WestTexasWend
Dan Rather is happier than a horse without a saddle — and feeling just about as free.
Lately he's been humming the lyrics to Rodney Crowell's "Still Learning How to Fly."
He even popped into Comedy Central on Tuesday night to banter with fake news guy Jon Stewart and offer a few folksy one-liners.
On a more serious note, the proud Texan and former CBS News anchor is embarking on a new career as a "global correspondent" for "Dan Rather Reports," a weekly news program on the super-niche network HDNet. He has free rein to gallop into stories that his corporate bosses at CBS and Viacom probably would have nixed.
"It's liberating and inspiring and exciting," he says. "I desperately want to deliver on this opportunity, but it's daunting. We may not make it. We're trying to climb a very high mountain here."
You might recall that Rather, a part-time Austinite, was forced out as anchor of the "CBS Evening News" in 2005 on the heels of a poorly sourced report about President Bush's military service. He left CBS altogether in June and partnered up with Dallas billionaire and HDNet founder Mark Cuban for this wild new ride.
Although Cuban is based in Dallas and HDNet is headquartered in Denver, Rather is based in New York, with occasional side trips to Austin to see daughter Robin and the grandkids. "Rather Reports" will feature only one on-camera reporter (Rather) and has a slim staff of 19 full- and part-timers.
For competitive reasons, Rather, who turned 75 on Halloween, declines to talk about specific stories for Tuesday night's debut. We do know that he has been traveling extensively since summer, including out of the country. Several pieces are in the can, but nothing is set in stone.
"We want to be up on the balls of our feet for any breaking news," he says.
In a free-wheeling phone interview, Rather said he plans to tackle hard news reports that include analysis, deep investigative pieces and interviews that just might run the full hour. He wants his new program to be known for two "signatures": conversations with soldiers who have fought in Afghanistan and Iraq and the "squeeze on people in the middle-income strata" (he hates the term middle class) who fear they're heading for poverty.
"The mission here is to strive for excellence and be fearless," said Rather, whose 44-year career with CBS News was marked by excellence, controversy and election-night Ratherisms such as "beat him like a rented mule" and "shakier than cafeteria Jell-O."
After his CBS exit, nobody expected Rather to move to Austin and take up full-time fishing, but the HDNet venture came as a bit of a surprise. For one thing, Rather is used to the big stage, and HDNet is a relatively tiny platform.
The high-definition network is available on satellite and digital cable services in about 4 million homes. By comparison, CNN and Fox News cable networks each reach about 90 million satellite and basic cable homes, and the broadcast networks, such as CBS, reach 111.4 million homes.
"It's a small audience now, but it will grow," said Rather, who owns two pricey high-def sets himself (one in Austin, one in New York). "This is like the period of moving from black and white to color. Television is moving quickly toward high-definition."
HDNet is modeled after HBO or Showtime, rather than CBS or CNN. Cuban owns the network outright and doesn't answer to stockholders or corporate owners. Some advertising appears on the network, but it is not rated by Nielsen.
"Mark doesn't care about ratings or demographics," Rather said. "That's not part of his business plan. He doesn't have the kind of entanglements that large corporate bodies have. Viacom, Disney and GE have big legislative and regulatory needs in D.C., and that's anathema to the kind of reporting we want to do. When you do tough stuff that generates big blow-back, the corporate entity has difficulty backing it up because they're in conflict."
Since ratings and ad revenue will not be measures of success, Rather's new venture might be measured by impact. If his news and investigative pieces break news, other media will pick them up. Maybe Rather's reports will be quoted on CNN or (dare we say?) CBS News.
Which brings us to a break from Rather's hard-charging focus on the future. The end of his long career with CBS was unpleasant, to say the least, although both sides profess respect for the other. Rather does not talk much about the break and chooses his words carefully when asked to assess Katie Couric's version of "Evening News" — widely criticized as being softer than the program anchored by Rather and Walter Cronkite before him.
"It's not the kind of broadcast I did," Rather said cautiously. "(CBS president) Les Moonves and (CBS News president) Sean McManus said they wanted to take the 'Evening News' in a different direction, and it's clear they've broken with the past and done that. It's unclear at this stage how it will all shake out. They haven't yet had the challenge of a big, breaking story that unfolds without a script. That will be a major test, so I'll withhold judgment for now."
Does he think they have better forgers there than at CBS?
"He even popped into Comedy Central on Tuesday night to banter with fake news guy Jon Stewart and offer a few folksy one-liners." I thought Dan Rather was the "fake news guy?"
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