Posted on 06/23/2002 6:46:36 PM PDT by Pokey78
New York -- The swank "21" Club was knee deep in celebs and standout moments during last week's official launch party for "Connie Chung Tonight" on CNN.
In one corner of the quintessential New York "in" spot, Larry King and Lou Dobbs snickered like schoolboys while mock-complaining that they'd never gotten cocktail napkins imprinted with the names of their CNN shows. Mid-room, Fox News' take-no-prisoners talk show host Bill O'Reilly was smiling and posing for photos with Chung -- his ostensible rival -- and her husband, daytime yakker Maury Povich.
Waiters passed baby lamb chops while big fish like CBS president Les Moonves and DreamWorks studio honcho Jeffrey Katzenberg worked the room. Still, it was the diminutive Chung, 55, who turned in the night's one true showstopping moment. In song, no less.
"Get Me to the Get On Time" was a slightly off-key, dead on-target tribute to the "get" -- those high-profile, often highly combustible interviews with the likes of Gary Condit that have become Chung's calling card and have tended to deliver boffo ratings to whichever network aired them.
As Chung lustily belted out lines like "That's right, Osama/Come talk to Mama!" CNN News Group Chairman Walter Isaacson, AOL Time Warner Chairman Steve Case and the rest of the CNN-heavy crowd hooted its approval. By the big finish, many were singing along, their overall tone suggesting fervent hope as much as outright exultation.
Who could blame them? After all, CNN has invested itself heavily in the success of Chung, the former "CBS Evening News" anchor whose weekday program debuts tonight at 8. "Connie Chung Tonight" will also serve as the coming-out party for CNN's glamorous new street-side studio in the Time & Life Building, a big-bucks project that's intended to make a statement about the network's "ramping up its presence in the world's media capital," says CNN spokeswoman Christa Robinson.
Neither Chung nor CNN will confirm reports she's being paid between $2 million and $3 million a year to go head-to-head with current cable-news ratings champ O'Reilly and onetime daytime talk king Phil Donahue on the newly revamped MSNBC. But by bringing in its biggest news name yet, the Atlanta-based network that once rigorously shunned the star system puts an exclamation point on another statement it began making last fall when it hired well-known anchors Paula Zahn (to host a three-hour morning show) and Aaron Brown, whose "NewsNight" follows King at 10 p.m.
Chung's not just another pretty face: She's worked at CBS, NBC and, most recently, ABC News, winning three Emmys and two prestigious Peabody Awards along the way. But she's also generated an extraordinary amount of buzz -- not all positive -- outside the industry for things like the Condit interview and one in 1994 in which she got (some said tricked) Newt Gingrich's mom to confide her son's off-color description of first lady Hillary Clinton.
And then there was Chung's 1990 decision (announced in an official statement) to reduce her CBS workload so she and Povich could take "a very aggressive approach to having a baby." They eventually adopted Matthew, now 7.
CNN clearly is banking on Chung's whopping name recognition and more than 30-year journalistic track record to help bolster its prime-time lineup, break news and attract more viewers. "I think people will see a face that's credible and admired, and they'll stop to hear what she has to say," Isaacson says.
Others say it's too soon to know if CNN's own "get" has got what it takes to make a big splash on cable.
"She's definitely a brand," says Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. "Whether she is the brand they need to get the job done is still up for grabs."
Big promotional push|
"I'm distraught. I'm bordering on emotionally unstable."
Chung leans back in her chair in her small CNN office and flashes a wicked grin. It's the morning after the "21" party, and she's considering the question of whether the highly visible promotional push for her show -- ads have been running two or three times an hour on CNN for weeks -- has her feeling pressure to produce noticeable results. Fast.
Chung chooses to deflect the question with a blend of humor and what she swears is the God's honest truth: that when it comes to ratings expectations for "Connie Chung Tonight," CNN hasn't said anything.
"Which is very nice," Chung says. "If I worried about that, I really would be intimidated."
That sounds disingenuous coming from one whose tough questioning once caused Tonya Harding to cry "uncle" and walk out of an interview. It may just be that Chung doesn't want to say anything to upset the kismet behind her move to CNN in January.
She still had a year left on her ABC contract, where, she says, she loved working on "20/20." But something was bugging her.
"We went back to stories that were still in the edit room before 9/11 and tried to retool them, because they hadn't aired yet," Chung says. "And I found every time I had written 'tragic,' it wasn't tragic. Every time I wrote 'extraordinary,' it was not extraordinary anymore. So I think when this opportunity came along -- because I do believe that CNN is the sanctuary for news -- it seemed to fit perfectly in my mind to come here."
Laughter may also be Chung's best defense in a career that's had many very public ups-and-downs. Example: Asked what she learned from her two years co-anchoring the "CBS Evening News" with Dan Rather, Chung chortles merrily.
"I learned never to sit next to someone who doesn't want you there," says Chung, who was stripped of her anchor's blazer soon after the Gingrich interview, although speculation was rampant that the real reason was Rather's chafing over sharing the chair with anyone.
"Connie Chung Tonight" is all hers, for better or worse. With O'Reilly leading the way (So far this year, "The O'Reilly Factor" has attracted a nightly average of nearly 2 million viewers, compared with CNN's average of 720,000 for "The Point" and later, "Live From . . ."), Fox News Channel in January surpassed CNN in average viewership numbers in prime time and hasn't lost ground since.
The battle now being joined by MSNBC is over more than bragging rights. At a time when the major broadcast networks' commitment to news is being questioned (Letterman for Koppel anyone?), cable news is taking on an increasingly prominent role. From getting interviews and guests to selling ads, it pays to be perceived as the most important 24-hour news network.
Fox officials say they won't retool "The O'Reilly Factor" one smidge to combat Chung.
"The last night for which numbers are available, Bill got a 2 [rating] and CNN got a .6," said Fox News' vice president of programming Kevin Magee. "Two doesn't change for a .6."
But Two did show up at "21" to wish Chung luck. "What I really want you to do is just knock Donahue off," O'Reilly told Chung, who'd sent him an invite. Then O'Reilly suggested he'd be keeping a watchful eye on "Connie Chung Tonight."
"At that time of the day, there's only one way to go -- up, and at our expense," O'Reilly confided. "I expect her to be good competition."
Said Aaron Brown, whose "NewsNight" would benefit from a strong Chung showing at 8 p.m.: "She has to dent O'Reilly. Not in the first day, week or month, but she has to chip away at him. That will deliver audience to Larry and me."
That's partly why she's there, says the person in charge of CNN's main U.S. network.
"I think Connie would be one of the best lead-ins you could have," says Teya Ryan, executive vice president of CNN/U.S. "It's a good flow."
Publicly, anyway, all this ratings talk drives Isaacson a bit batty -- particularly the narrow-lens focus on O'Reilly vs. Chung. They're after different audiences, he insists, and in Chung's case it's not just the traditional cable news viewing audience.
"We're going to leave the loud, opinionated, shouting preachers to other channels," says Isaacson. "We want some good storytellers. That's what Connie Chung excels at."
Isaacson and Ryan both insist they haven't even thought about ratings goals for Chung. Some knowledgeable observers also give the network savvy points for going with a known quantity like Chung to woo viewers away from as many as 100 other channels.
Chung's "Q Score" -- a measure of TV personalities' familiarity and likability -- was reported to be extremely high in 1993, when CBS paired her with Rather. And while the head of the privately held company that calculates Q Scores won't reveal Chung's -- or even if she has one -- he wouldn't blame CNN if it cared about such things.
"Look at the proliferation of magazines with celebrities on their covers," says Marketing Evaluations/TvQ, Inc. President Steven Levitt. "Why should it be any different for the TV news industry, whether it's broadcast or cable?"
It's not just that Chung is known, says the Center for the Study of Popular Television's Thompson. It's also what she's known for.
"She got the Gary Condit interview," Thompson points out. "It got her mixed reviews, but it demonstrated she was still a player. Everyone wanted it. And everyone watched."
The right questions|
Chung considers the Condit interview her best ever and a "model" for what she'll try to do regularly on "Connie Chung Tonight."
"I methodically asked the questions that viewers wanted asked and followed the trail of just true curiosity," says Chung, whose goal is to explore the more personal sides of stories without ever losing sight of the news. This is still CNN, after all. That won't always mean big-name gets, although Chung does promise to "make a little news" on her first or second show. That's all she'll say about that. She's more forthcoming about what could be a typical format: three segments, beginning with an "explainer piece" and followed by live interviews.
"Not unlike 'Nightline,' " Chung says, before flashing that wicked grin again. "In fact, I wanted to call it 'Earlier Than Nightline.' "
But that's not what was printed on the napkins at "21." Chung knows she's in a different place of sorts now, headlining a nightly show with big expectations in the smaller pond of cable news.
"I know we can't hit home runs five days a week," says Chung. "It will be very hard 'day of' to get the ideal person that we want to tell the story. But we're going to tell those stories."
And if she has to fight the big broadcast networks for her "gets" now, so what? She's been preparing for this all her life. The youngest of five girls (five other children died) in a Chinese immigrant family, the Washington native says she had to "work hard to get a word in edgewise in my family. I guess that did prepare me for this sort of work without my even realizing it."
A word? Povich's counting on "Connie Chung Tonight" to have the last word.
"She wants to bring cable to a point where they're not a stepchild of the 'get,' where no longer do CBS, NBC and ABC have a monopoly on the first interview," said Povich, watching Chung flit about "21." "You're gonna have three people pitted against each other at 8 p.m. That's pressure, but I'd bet on my wife."
CNN's N.Y. presence bad news for Atlanta?
New York -- When the first program airs live Monday night from its glitzy new streetside studio, CNN will officially be here big-time in the world's media capital.
Which raises the question: How much longer will CNN be based in Atlanta?
"There is no long-term plan to move the network to New York," says CNN News Group Chairman Walter Isaacson. "We do shows where they make sense."
The network's newest show, "Connie Chung Tonight," makes its splashy debut at 8 Monday night in the new facility in midtown Manhattan's Time & Life Building. Actually, there are two studios in the slick space, whose overall cost CNN officials refuse to divulge (privately, the number being bandied about is $15 million).
The bigger unveiling comes later this summer, when Paula Zahn's "American Morning" show moves to a second, larger studio with a wall of windows along Sixth Avenue and a prime view of Radio City Music Hall.
With Zahn on assignment last week, Atlanta-based anchors Bill Hemmer and Daryn Kagan pinch-hit on "American Morning" in New York (actually, Hemmer has been here for a month). They joined curmudgeonly New York-based anchor Jack Cafferty, who asked the question on many people's minds: "Is there anybody left in Atlanta?"
Yes, says AOL-Time Warner Chairman Steve Case. "The core of CNN will remain in Atlanta," he says.
Besides raising CNN's public profile, network executives say the new facility helps alleviate studio gridlock in the nearby bureau where "Morning," "NewsNight With Aaron Brown" and "Lou Dobbs Moneyline" all currently share space.
"We expanded our New York presence rapidly," says Teya Ryan, head of CNN/U.S. "There was nowhere to go."
The good thing about this is that Isaacson actually believes his own BS.
Chung never had any credibility to begin with, but if she did, it would have been lost her first minute on the air on CNN.
Yeah, maybe CNN can get her to do more cutting-edge journalistic coups like the interview with Newt Gingrich's mother.
You got that right
The "in" crowd is so out of touch with reality. The sooner they self-destruct the better.
Yeah...she was hot once, but I think I'll wait for Chonnie Cung now.(ol' maury took his toll I guess...)
FMCDH
We rule the horizontal and the vertical. Connie Chung may be a dream to the liberal nitwits who think she has something to say, but even she can't inject IQ points into the slack-jawed nubskulls who actually watch CNN.
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