Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 1, 1994 TAG: 9404020015
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Tom Shales
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
He's warmly analog in a world gone coldly digital.
He is Charles Kuralt, and millions of people are going to miss him something awful.
For 15 years, Kuralt has presided over one of the last bastions of civility and class in television, the ``Sunday Morning'' program on CBS. But on the ides of March, the 59-year-old Kuralt shocked CBS executives and his intensely loyal audience by announcing plans to retire. This weekend he'll host his last ``Sunday Morning.''
The network wanted to accompany his exit with hoopla and pageantry, or at least a retrospective of his work on ``Sunday Morning'' and all those great ``On the Road'' pieces he did for 25 of his 37 years at CBS. But all Kuralt wanted for his last ``Sunday Morning'' was a minute or so at the end of the show to say goodbye.
It will be heart-rending and traumatic for many, for Kuralt and the program have long since become one and the same. Kuralt has been its only regular anchor and he put his imprint on it from the beginning. This was to be one TV newscast that would remain calm, unhurried, unhyped.
``We don't use any of the gimmicks of television at all,'' Kuralt told me in 1981. ``I think the faces of the people on the air telling you the news is enough. I don't believe in all those gimmicks and stuff.''
Every news program could not be like ``Sunday Morning.'' There just isn't time. But it became very important that there be one such show, one place where subjects could be examined in depth, where the pace wasn't breathless - one place not governed by the mad itch to get on to the next topic as quickly as possible.
Kuralt developed a wide and devoted following. David Letterman, of all people, revealed himself to be a huge fan when I interviewed him in November.
``Charles Kuralt still has one of the best shows on television,'' Letterman said. ``It's still great. I mean, it's just compelling. It's just wonderful.'' Letterman said he knew people joked about the little quiet nature pieces at the end of each show - ``Let's listen to the snow melt in Bozeman, Mont.'' - but said he loved ``Sunday Morning'' anyway.
``They do nice, extended pieces the way they used to do on the nightly news shows. I think there is something so satisfying about that.''
Andy Rooney, like Kuralt a gentleman of the old school at CBS News, paid a touching tribute to his colleague on ``60 Minutes'' recently, noting that Kuralt's decision to leave corresponded to a ``decline in the quality'' of TV news.
``Kuralt wouldn't say so, because he's a classy person and not the kind of guy who says a lot of negative things about anything, but I suspect this decline contributed to his decision to leave television,'' Rooney said. ``He has more integrity than a lot of us who believe what he believes but continue to take the money anyway.''
Rooney said Kuralt was walking away from a $6 million annual salary as well as from ``Sunday Morning.''
From time to time over the years, I have taken the occasional poke at Charles Kuralt. I once called him ``a walking pot-bellied stove.'' Another time it was ``our national windbag.'' Sometimes he poured on the folksiness a bit too thick for me.
Letters from readers objecting to such remarks were always articulate and passionate, and not just the usual hate mail. And faced now with Kuralt's imminent disappearance, I feel guilty for ever having said a disparaging word about a man who rarely had disparaging words to say about anyone else.
Charles Kuralt is the faithful family doctor who still makes house calls and always leaves you feeling better, but he won't be coming 'round any more. How could television get any worse? This is how: By Charles Kuralt leaving it.
|Washington Post Writers Group
Tom Shales is the TV critic for the Washington Post.|
by CNB