Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 28, 1993 TAG: 9309240342
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FRAZIER MOORE ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
``And I've never been sued,'' he grins. ``I've been yelled at. A lot. But never sued. I'm proud of that.''
As Chancellor logs what may be his last week at NBC News, he has that unblemished record and quite a bit more to be proud of.
His leave-taking ends a 43-year hitch at his one and only workplace (oh, all right, he did spend two years running the Voice of America as an appointee of President Johnson).
He and his employer grew up together.
``When I started at NBC in 1950, I was one of its first television reporters,'' says Chancellor, chatting in his Rockefeller Center office. ``We only had three or four.''
In person, just as on the air, his unexcited, reassuring manner is less that of a broadcaster than a pediatrician. A guy making house calls for four decades, Chancellor gives his viewers a shot of reality so they don't feel the sting.
In that reliable fashion, he will bring his observations to ``Nightly'' audiences this Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. There may be one or more appearances after that. And then it's over at NBC. But don't expect a formal farewell, cautions Chancellor, who likens such ceremony to ``lowering my body into the ground.''
By summer's end, he will move to Princeton, N.J., to write books. One will be about television, politics and life in America - three things about which he might well know as much as anyone.
Yet for someone whose career reaches back to the birth of TV news, he is no Methuselah. A man you might imagine was born wearing those horn-rimmed glasses, he seems largely unaffected by the decades. A bit jowlier and thicker in the middle now, perhaps. But today, at 65, he still looks middle-aged. Maybe he always did.
``By 1952,'' he continues, ``we knew TV would be more powerful than radio, and this place [NBC News] really got going.''
So did Chancellor.
``I worked in the states, I worked overseas,'' he recalls. He served as a panelist on the 1960 televised debates between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, and put in two years as host of ``Today,'' ``which I hated,'' he says with typical directness.
``I returned to Europe, then came back as White House correspondent, then jobbed around on other beats in Washington. I was `Nightly News' anchorman [1971-82]. By the end, it got kind of boring, and then I left the anchor chair to be a commentator.''
In that last role, he carried on a tradition of on-air editorials pioneered by Eric Sevareid and Howard K. Smith. The tradition now seems to have come to an end; NBC says no one will replace Chancellor.
``I've really enjoyed every day of the work at NBC,'' he says. ``Now, it's time to go. Besides, I really think I've outlived the culture here.''
In no uncertain terms, Chancellor condemns the corporate takeovers of the three networks.
``We loathe GE, you understand,'' he says, referring to the company that swallowed NBC parent RCA in 1986. ``We hate GE. But [CBS Chairman] Larry Tisch is pretty bad, too.
``The people who came in under these new managements believe that television people are interchangeable parts,'' he says, and cites a top NBC News executive's use of the word ``fungible'' to describe personnel.
``Half the staff had to look it up,'' says Chancellor, and when they did, they found a disturbing definition: ``Designating movable goods, as grain, any unit or part of which can replace another unit.''
Definitely not fungible, Chancellor helped invent TV news, then four decades later closed out his career, he notes pointedly, ``with a job that had nothing really to do with television. I just got to write whatever I wanted and I got 12 to 15 million people to look at it every day. I didn't have to do TV. I just did me.''
It's a distinction those he leaves behind would do well to ponder.
\ Elsewhere on TV
Silver Service: Ron Silver makes his directorial debut and stars in ``Lifepod,'' an original TV film on Fox Broadcasting's new Monday night movie series. The science fiction thriller, which also stars Robert Loggia, airs tonight at 8.
by CNB