Posted on 07/22/2002 1:06:06 PM PDT by GeneD
Ever since ABC announced in June that This Week With Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts would become This Week With George Stephanopoulos, Sam Donaldson has ducked the press. It's ironic that the voluble newsman — infamous for chasing down elusive politicians — now has little to say about his own future.
After a stellar 35 years at ABC News, why did the 68-year-old Donaldson go mute? Better to be silent than to lash out at the bosses who reduced have him to a marginal role.
"I've been deliberately not returning calls," Donaldson admits. "People called when George Stephanopoulos was announced, and I put out a little statement wishing him well. If I hadn't wanted to wish George well, I wouldn't have said so. I like him and think he's good. What's the euphemism these days? We don't have any issues. I don't want to be part of any invidious comparison to George and [Donaldson's] This Week."
However, Donaldson does allude to issues with ABC News, especially with its newsmagazines 20/20 and PrimeTime: Thursday. "I have to be careful what I say," remarks Donaldson, who hopes there is still a place for his brand of journalism on those shows. "In the early days when Diane [Sawyer] and I started PrimeTime [he coanchored it with her from 1989 to 1998], most every piece we did I was proud of and could defend. I can't make the same statement today.
"When I say defend it, I'm talking about my own taste," Donaldson explains. "If you like murder or rape or multiple-birth or diet-pill-of-the-week stories and want to watch them, fine. But if we say it's ABC News, we should be a little bit better than that."
When the changes at This Week were announced, ABC was careful to outline Donaldson's new role, which includes contributing to Nightline and continuing his ABC News Webcast samdonaldson@abcnews.com. However, Donaldson's primary role on Nightline is as a contributor to that newscast's spin-off, Up Close, which the network intends to replace in January with a show hosted by comedian Jimmy Kimmel.
And Donaldson's Webcast, which launched with much fanfare almost three years ago, is all but kaput. "I haven't done a fresh Webcast in about three months," says Donaldson, who explains that ABC severely cut back the Webcast's budget. "When [ABC] wants to put money back in the division and do a Webcast the way we used to do — that includes satellite interviews — I've told them, 'I'm your boy,'" he says. "But we'd been reduced to hauling people off the street to get their opinion on things like school vouchers. So I said to the gang, 'This isn't accomplishing anything. I don't know why anyone would watch.'"
Given his reduced role at ABC News, Donaldson has turned most of his energy toward talk radio with the syndicated program "Sam Donaldson: Live in America." Back in September, when the show began, Donaldson confided to friends that his days as an ABC News star seemed numbered. Radio was his escape hatch."There's one big unknown I have to tackle with the radio show," says Donaldson. "Talk-radio stations, for the most part, are conservative. Program directors across the country, whether they have evidence of it or not, believe that is what talk audiences want, and that's not me. I'm not a left-winger, but I'm not a right-winger. On some issues I could sound just like Rush Limbaugh, and on many issues not." Still, the show was just expanded from two hours to three, and it is performing well in such cities as Houston and Washington, D.C. Donaldson hopes to crack major markets New York and Los Angeles. "I'll still keep my hand in television," he says. "If I'm going to make ['Live in America'] a success, it cannot be a second job. Radio has to come first now."
Not.
Somebody did, when she was a baby.
He has the perfect face for radio.
His webcast is defunct, his radio show is listened to by a few thousand people, and his contributions to other ABC news productions are winding down. Some people don't know when enough is enough. Sam, you're a 68 year old dinosaur, go to your New Mexico ranch and shut up.
That's PUKIE to you.
As far as it beign his job to " sink his claws into everybody " ; Maybe not everybody but almost everybody. If he wants to get to the truth that is his job most of the time.
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