Well, it has finally happened, Ted Koppel left nightline. Now a trifecta of anchors will be used. Koppel hopes that viewers will tune in, or we will yet have another juvenile like comedy show among the already many mendicant ones out there like Jimmy Kimmel.

Questions for debate:

1.)Will the new show succeed?

2.)Is news and serious substance reporting now in serious danger of being over taken by tabloid "fun" news and comedy?

3.)If you were to rank the top 10 anchors and reporters, where would Koppel fit in? Would he?

Personally, I was a big fan of Nightline, except on nights when he got carried away with the whole Tuesdays with Morrie thing.

1.)Will the new show succeed?

Unless Letterman and Leno start bringing in new material and changing their tired format, there is a chance among big three network viewers that Nightline might get an audience.

2.)Is news and serious substance reporting now in serious danger of being over taken by tabloid "fun" news and comedy?

Let's put it this way: How many young adults watch The Daily Show as their source for news?

Remember these trials--O.J., Michael Jackson, Robert Blake ad nauseum? What were those if not tabloid news? The entertainment factor has been around for a long time.

3.)If you were to rank the top 10 anchors and reporters, where would Koppel fit in? Would he?

Koppel would probably fit into my list of top anchors (probably around 7th or 8th place), but then I liked Dan Rather and was sorry to see him go; you're obviously going to form your own opinion about my tastes ("commie pinko!" ). I get tired of the repetitive nature of CNN from time to time; it's almost amusing to see Wolf Blitzer try to say the same thing six or seven different ways where there is breaking news but precious little material at the time to report.

(P.S. Cute "link"--Are you trying to illustrate Question #2?)

Good topic!

I've been a fan of Nightline since the days it started out as America Held Hostage with Peter Jennings reporting the events of the day in the Iran hostage crisis. Over the years it's been my favorite news program although I think they got a little stale ( or lazy) in the past couple of years. I'm going to miss it.

1.)Will the new show succeed?

Boy, I don't know. I'm not really sure what they are going to do with the new show, but network news in general is kind of going by the wayside, a victim of ratings and the bottom line. I don't know that a serious late night news program can compete with Leno and Letterman.


2.)Is news and serious substance reporting now in serious danger of being over taken by tabloid "fun" news and comedy?

On the broadcast networks, yes, that's already happened. And, I'm not so sure that's a bad thing given that we have the cable news networks (and others) for more in-depth news. We still have shows like 60 Minutes, Dateline, and 20/20, but they really aren't quite the same as a Nightline since they don't really cover the story as it's happening.

The landscape and infrastructure of news reporting has changed dramatically in the past decade or so, thanks in large part to the success of CNN. News assets and resources have been shifted away from network news programs to news service organizations that provide news to local stations for a fee. There are very few assets in the field anymore dedicated to specific network national broadcast news programs. In California for example, there's really only one fulltime ABC Network reporter - Brian Rooney. The rest of the news coverage infrastructure is provided by local stations and an ABC news service company called "ABSAT". ABSAT provides reporters and production teams for local stations around the country. I worked a lot for them when I was the operator on a free-lance satellite news truck. We had one reporter on a story and local stations around the country would book "windows" for her on their local news programs where she would report the story as if she was their reporter. Typically they would run her "package" and she'd add a tagline to the end of it with a "This is Jane Doe, reporting for XYZ News, back to you Jack and Jill". All of the broadcast networks have something like this organization and so does CNN, actually, CNN kind of invented it. It's really changed the face of the way television news is delivered in this country and I think that's still an evolving process. It is driving national news programs more towards the documentary format that's put together over a period days and weeks and moved spot coverage of local/national/world events more to the local news stations themselves. I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing.


3.)If you were to rank the top 10 anchors and reporters, where would Koppel fit in? Would he?

In his prime, I think Koppel was the best one on one interviewer in the business. He could be tough without being abrasive (ala Mike Wallace) and was generally quite fair. Nightline was a good program. I'm going to miss it.

Well, it looks as if things are good for Nightline right now, though the improved numbers might just be explained by curiosity. I've watched every night since Monday and I have to say that I have paid attention to it, and that I didn't fall asleep once, unlike when Ted hosted it!.



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