Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 13, 1992 TAG: 9201110249
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TOM SHALES THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A ROSY REMINISCENCE
WHEN acclaim runs short in television, people just praise themselves. NBC is celebrating the 40th anniversary of its "Today" show with a prime-time special in which the show gives itself a standing ovation.Even so, the special - airing Tuesday night - contains plenty of memory-stirring material. Viewers would have been better served by more clips from the old days and less glorification of "Today's" current cast. But NBC, bottom-lining it to the hilt, clearly wanted the show to serve as a hearty hoorah of a plug.
For two full years, "Today," the pioneer among network morning shows, has been beaten in the ratings by ABC's "Good Morning, America," and it really irks the NBC folks to be locked out of the top spot they previously held.
The topple from first place appears to be a viewer reaction to backstage bloodshed at the program. That includes the Deborah Norville debacle, when muddle-headed NBC executives forced the unseasoned Norville onto the show while forcing the very seasoned Jane Pauley off; and the infamous Bryant Gumbel memo, wherein the "Today" cohost trashed Willard Scott, the show's beloved weatherman and blimp-shaped mascot.
Nowadays they're so determined at the "Today" show to convince you this is one big happy family that the forced camaraderie can reach toxic levels. On a recent edition, cohost Katie Couric and newswoman Faith Daniels delivered encomiums to Gumbel designed to make him seem the dearest and most lovable sweetie-pie to face a camera.
A few days later, though, an unguarded moment seemed more revelatory. Couric and substitute weatherman Al Roker, who engagingly pinch-hits for Willard, went mano-a-mano singing old TV show theme songs like "Green Acres." Gumbel sat watching this merriment incredulously, like the kid at the birthday part who won't join in any games for fear of getting his clothes dirty.
As an interviewer, though, Gumbel's still tops, and with Couric humanizing the show, and Willard enlivening it, "Today" does have the most likable morning cast. Ratings were up for the fourth quarter of 1991, and NBC executives hope this year will see "Today" snatch the crown back from "GMA."
As the special notes, "Today" had the field all to itself when it began on Jan. 14, 1952. The other networks programmed nothing at that hour, and it was widely predicted the show would fail because Americans didn't want to face their TV sets so early.
In fact, ratings were weak until the show added a shameless gimmick: chimpanzee J. Fred Muggs. He may have annoyed, and even bitten, host Dave Garroway and his cohorts, but Muggs drew kids to the show, and their parents followed.
Now, of course, "Today" is an American Institution, all three networks have morning shows, and stations throughout the country have started their own local versions of "Today" to compete. Even England, which resisted for years, now has "breakfast television" patterned on the "Today" model.
The anniversary special seems slapped-together and inadequate, but it does cram lots of highlights into an hour, including fleeting glimpses of the great Garroway chatting with such guests as Eleanor Roosevelt, Frank Lloyd Wright and Buster Keaton, and asking Duke Ellington to play a tune on the piano (he plays "Take the A Train"). The "Today" show aimed higher in its early years, but then all television did.
Past hosts of the program drop by to reminisce, including Pauley, who spent 13 years on "Today"; Barbara Walters, hailed by Gumbel as "the best known and most celebrated lady in TV news"; Walters' cohost Hugh Downs (now co-anchor, with her, of ABC's "20/20"); current "NBC Nightly News" anchor Tom Brokaw; and John Chancellor, who said he didn't want the job, didn't like the job, and once or twice actually fell asleep on the air.
Gumbel optimistically offers a toast to "Today" noting its glorious past and anticipating "an equally bright future." But "Today" will never be as good as it was at the brave beginning, when the insatiably curious Garroway took viewers on daily journeys of exploration and ended each show with a hand raised as he spoke the word "Peace."
The 40th anniversary special ends that way too, and, we trust, so will the 50th.
Washington Post Writers Group