Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 9, 1991 TAG: 9104090219
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TOM SHALES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
"We're the division that everything is turning around in."
Gartner points to such accomplishments as improved ratings at NBC's "Today" show (now that Katherine Couric has replaced Deborah Norville), new prime-time shows like "Expose" with Tom Brokaw and "Real Life" with Jane Pauley, and improved ratings for Brokaw's "NBC Nightly News."
Then there are those fluffy Maria Shriver specials that air every now and then. "Big numbers!" Gartner shouts. "Big numbers!"
According to many insiders at NBC News, however, the new shows and the "big numbers" are puny accomplishments compared to the overall decline in quality and morale throughout the division, much of it brought on by massive layoffs and cost-cutting that General Electric, owner of NBC, has ordered.
"They're just dismembering us," one longtime NBC News producer says. "We got clobbered on the Persian Gulf War because they were thinking about budgets instead of coverage." Gartner estimates coverage of the war cost NBC $55 million, including lost revenue from pre-empted entertainment shows. Now GE has reportedly ordered more cuts to make up for that.
"Things could not be worse," another producer laments. "GE is on a direct hit course to dismantle the entire news operation and fold it into the News Channel."
NBC's News Channel is a new operation that signed on Jan. 1 and feeds reports and pictures 24 hours a day out of Charlotte, N.C., for use by NBC affiliates in their local newscasts. NBC News veterans derisively refer to its 60 employees as "the news children" because the channel is staffed largely with untrained novices who work cheap.
Insiders charge the News Channel is located in North Carolina because it's a right-to-work state, thus guaranteeing NBC won't have union problems or have to pay union wages.
"Sure it's a right-to-work state, but the world is full of right-to-work states," says Gartner. "It is a nonunion operation, but that's not why it's in North Carolina." The real reasons, Gartner maintains, are that the location is easily accessible by air and has excellent access to various communications satellite paths.
"If people here are upset about it, it's because I've done a bad job of explaining it," Gartner says of his News Channel. "They ought to be proud of it. They ought to want to nurture it. It's a real vehicle for serving the affiliates better."
Both Gartner and his executive vice president, Don Browne (widely considered to be Gartner's successor), say the News Channel was set up partly to offset inroads made by CNN, which supplied some NBC (and CBS) affiliates with news reports during the gulf war.
But NBC News staffers worry that the News Channel is not just part of the future of NBC News, but all of it. NBC, like CBS and ABC, is closing bureaus throughout the country, as well as some foreign bureaus, and will rely more on affiliates to do the reporting.
Thus, sources say, network news will come to look more and more like local news. It will no longer be special or unique.
"Probably more bureaus will be consolidated in some way or other," concedes Robert C. Wright, president of NBC. But he denies that the News Channel and the use of affiliates is designed to replace NBC News. "We certainly don't intend to turn ourselves into a headline news service," Wright says.
Many of those inside NBC News blame Gartner for many of their problems, saying he participates in, rather than protests, GE's budget-cutting. Reuven Frank, twice president of NBC News, says, "Michael Gartner is the first man in that job to think of himself more as a publisher than an editor. The business requirements take precedence with him over the editorial."
Of course, there are three other national network news sources, counting CNN. Does it matter if NBC News shrivels away? Yes, concerned insiders say. "The public's going to lose a lot if we go down the drain," one newsman says. "They're going to lose an important voice. Something is being done by corporate America that's awful."
Next: Johnny (Carson) puts his foot down.
- Washington Post Writers Group\ Tom Shales is TV Editor and chief TV critic for The Washington Post.
by CNB