In the last ABC News poll on the subject, four out of five Americans said they watch
television news regularly. And we know from other studies that more people than not trust
television as their major source of news. And that trust comes down so often to belief
in a person, a face, a voice, man or woman, the anchor. Tom Jarrell, who's one of our
2020 correspondents and who is also one of our ABC News network anchors, is here tonight
with a report on his counterparts on the local scene, the local anchor. Tom?
Hugh, in their city, market and TV lingo, the biggest TV stars by far seen by more viewers
than any other, more often than any other personalities, are the local news anchors.
Their professional life is measured by audience ratings, box office if you will, which can
produce big profits for their stations and big salaries for them. That's a formula that
produces a deadly daily battle. It's 5 45 on a Wednesday afternoon. In 15 minutes, KSTP
TV, Channel 5 in Minneapolis, will go on the air with its 6 o'clock eyewitness news. It's
also 15 minutes away from doing battle, battle with its longtime arch rival across town,
WBCO Channel 4. And the prize in this war is not land or crown jewels, it's something
even more valuable, ratings.
Tape one is the cordoned off stuff and the bite is on tape two.
In Minneapolis, the local newscast often commands more viewers than any primetime network show.
That's more than Dallas, more than Little House on the Prairie, more than even 2020.
Right now, KSTP overall holds a one rating point edge over WCCO. It's a slim lead, but
it's worth almost a million dollars a year in extra revenue, if KSTP can hang on to it.
Some tense hours in St. Louis Park this afternoon and a woman has become an apparent murder
victim. So it's just one more line.
So the anxiety you see on the faces of the producers, the reporters, the technicians,
is caused not so much by the domestic murder that led the news that night, but by the contest
to get the news out to you.
And while the faces behind the camera may be somewhat strained, the face that feels
the tension the most is the one that can't afford to show it at all. The point man of
these troops, the Anchorman.
Good evening everyone. The governor sent a letter to lawmakers.
Of all the people in the news department, the people who are on the air are under more
pressure than anybody else in the entire news department because so much attention is focused
on what they do and their contribution personally. If the ratings go down, the first people you
look at are the anchors.
And I'm fully cognizant that we're being judged on several different levels, some of
which are non-journalistic.
They're doing a very specific job that involves cosmetics, choreography, and image building.
And I think the few who actually want to serve as journalists tend to be very frustrated
people.
The Anchorman. Who is he? Who is she? Well, one way of putting it is to say the Anchorman
is to television what newsprint is to your daily paper. They communicate the news directly
to you. They do it by sitting on a set like this one and reading, reading what a whole
staff of people have written for them as it rolls in front of the lens through what has
become the Anchorman's best friend, the teleprompter. Just about every Anchorman uses a prompter,
which is why they appeared it on the news so well they don't even need to look at their
notes. But Anchormen, of course, are not newsprint. The way television brings you the news is
with a face, a face that comes into your bedroom late at night and looks right at you. And
so when it comes to drawing viewers, the anchor can become as important as the news itself,
which is why anchoring local news today is big business, very big business.
Well, listen, don't sign anything longer than three years. Her name is Shirley Barish, the
den mother of a growing band of people who trade in what has come to be called Newsflash.
We will definitely get New York or L.A., I promise you. From her office on Madison Avenue
in New York City, Shirley looks at local news all day, tapes sent to her by aspiring Anchorman
and Anchor women from just about every crossroads town in America. Good looking guy. If she
likes what she sees, she'll use her grapevine of station executives and send the tape onto
a station that she knows is ready to pay for a new anchor. If she doesn't, it can mean
a local anchor who's hoping to move into big money in a big city will have a long wait.
Forget it. No. But I'm looking for that something special that makes one tape stand out from
all the rest. He really is pretty. And that one's going to be the star. But that doesn't
mean that all of these people aren't qualified broadcast journalists. I wouldn't handle them
otherwise. I think that hair is even natural. He is pretty. What brings out the feeling
of a star? You may say, this guy's got it. A very, very professional delivery, a warmth,
a charisma, which I can't explain at all. Youth? We are sort of a youth-oriented industry,
not as much as we were 10 or 12 years ago. Hair? It's not bad to have hair. It's better
to have hair than to be bald. Eyes? Eye contact is extremely important. But, you know, people
can have all those things and not have it. But how do you measure whether an Anchorman
has it? That's something people have been trying to do since the Anchorman was born
20 years ago. This is the latest method. A commercial station in Spokane, Washington
is using a device called TellBack. The man who invented it, Tom Westbrook, here explains
to a group of local townspeople how to use it. Are you, you, having a negative reaction
to that person or a positive reaction to that person? Think of all the things that you want
from a person who's on television. The station then receives a tape with its anchors and
the competitors, ranked according to how well they're liked. And the characteristics of
a well-liked anchor are the same in every city, and no wonder. Local television news
looks the same no matter where you watch. For example, how many of you have an eyewitness
news in your hometown? Here in Minneapolis you do. You also have one in Chicago. And
in Pittsburgh. In Orlando, Florida. In Boston. In Cleveland. And in more than 100 other cities
in this country. I refer to it as Burger King news. It's almost like having a franchise
that you open up. Everybody has the snazzy open, the nice set, the attractive anchor
people, and just plug in the name of the town and the name of the mayor and you've got a
newscast. The so-called eyewitness news look was all started by this man, Al Primo, when
he was news director 13 years ago at W.A.B.C. in New York. Primo is a news consultant now,
a man concerned with both journalism and cosmetics. Did he meet Anya? Here he's talking to the
news director of a Midwest station about the debut of a new anchor team. How do they like
each other the first time they saw each other? He also understands how much a good performance
by an anchor is worth. This is a very high stakes business. Millions of dollars changing
hands. So an anchorman who started working for 20, 25 thousand dollars is now, the next
time his contract's up, demanding to get 50 and 60 and 70 thousand dollars and sometimes
100, 200 and 300 thousand dollars. And sometimes even more than that. For example, anchoring
the local news in New York City reportedly earns Dave Marish more than 300 thousand dollars
a year. Gordon Peterson does the same thing in Washington for 370 thousand a year, while
the highest paid local anchor in the country does it in Los Angeles, Connie Chung, at a
reported salary of 600 thousand dollars a year. Are they worth it? I think they are.
I think they are. I think that this is still a business where very few can succeed and
those special people who have that gift, in addition to all the reporting skills and all
the good intentions, have that extra magic, are worth every nickel. But the price a local
station has to pay for an anchorman can often be more than just salary. For example, this
is a meeting of the management of KSTP in Minneapolis. A problem under discussion here.
How to manage the ego that goes with being a successful anchorman. We looked at a potential
weekend air talent and thought she was terrific. And even did market research, got a bunch
of candidates together to test her. And her agent in New York prepared a laundry list
of requests, big salary, car, coaching sessions with a New York drama coach, airline tickets
for a relative to come to Minneapolis and visit her, American Express card, unaudited
expense account, perk on top of perk on top of perk. Things I don't have. Things I don't
even think the station manager has. It is very difficult to deal with primadonnas who
really don't love and care for their work, like the guy who was here before and left.
Quite frankly, the reality of our business is that we build a news program around the
recognition factor of our anchors, their popularity. And when they're popular, they know it. They
know when the ratings go up and they have us over a barrel sometimes. And some of the
more unscrupulous ones don't hesitate for a moment to play it for all it's worth. And
how was that one for you? Okay. That was fine. Okay. Do Roseanne and Storm this time. And
once an anchorman is picked and paid for, it's time for the hype. Time for the local
station to promote its anchors. Not as reporters, but as personalities. And so when WABC in
New York wants a Christmas promotion, the anchors become the focus of an entire feature
film crew, complete with snow machine. Hollywood comes to local news. So the promotion of local
anchorman today is as slick as any Hollywood feature film. Anchors are now actors, sometimes
even comedians, playing roles that portray them as warm personalities, people you'd like
to invite into your home. They do all this to keep their ratings high. Because if the
ratings fall, so too might the head you watch each night. No topic more prevalent than ratings
in a newsroom. Are they up? Are they down? Did they take an overnight? Unless it may
be as between anchors, how many minutes you were on camera versus how many minutes he
or she was on camera. That's a very important consideration. I know anchor people whose wives
sit there with stopwatches and then compare notes at the end of the cast. And if the ratings
are high, local anchors are easily the best known people in town. This is Natalie Jacobson,
co-anchor of the six and 11 o'clock news at the number one station in Boston, WCVB channel
five. Natalie's presence in all those living rooms at night is so strong that she not only
reports the news, sometimes she is the news. Natalie had her baby this morning, a little
girl, Lindsey Dawn Curtis, seven pounds, 15 and a half ounces, 19 and three quarter inches
tall. Some tapes were saved for me. I saw that the stations had led with this news and
I was quite taken back by that. I understand that every radio station in Boston led with
it throughout the day and night. Well, sometimes it makes me cry. It's, it's, people feel
so strongly about us. They, I'm sorry. You're like a member of their family. Well, they
write us such, such warm letters, send gifts to the baby, things people made that spent
hours making. And that's hard to deal with. It makes my, the responsibility I feel to
my audience, all the greater. And I'm not sure that I can always live up to that, you
know? Well, success for a local anchor means touching the audience. She has the secret
there. Indeed. Were you ever a local anchor, Tom? Briefly in the sixties, you in Houston,
Texas on channel two and our chief competition across town on channel 11 was a young tiger
named Dan Rather. Oh really? Thank you, Tom. Dreams of flying, of falling, of sex. What
do they mean? What are you hiding or revealing? We'll look at dreams and their meaning next.