Charlie Gibson Announces His Retirement

He is without a doubt the smartest and best informed anchor I’ve known. A graduate of Sidwell Friends in Washington (where Chelsea Clinton went), he later graduated Princeton.

ABC announced Charlie Gibson’s retirement today. He’s 66.

It’s an exhausting job–the kind where you’re on-call 24/7. Maybe he just felt it was time.

There’s nothing in this whole affair that suggests it’s a Cronkite/Rather thing… that he’s being pushed. Diane Sawyer moves from GMA to World News as the new anchor.

It’s easy to misunderstand the importance of the news anchor. Most of what we see is nothing more than a reader. Many news managers (who should know better) fail to see beyond that superficiality. That’s why there are so many pretty, though vacuous, boys and girls on the news.

The anchor is the firewall. He/she is the last chance to check something before it hits air.

A good news anchor does more than just read. A good news anchor understands the context of the story and makes sure what’s on reflects that. Some of the more adept anchors also become managing editors–acknowledgment of that firewall.

I worked with Charlie Gibson a bunch of times when I used to fill-in on GMA (GMA–you’ve still got my number, right?). He is without a doubt the smartest and best informed anchor I’ve ever known. A graduate of Sidwell Friends School in Washington (where Chelsea Clinton went), he later graduated Princeton.

He will be missed.

That being said the impact of the single evening network news has diminished in this 24/7 cable/Internet era. TVNewser printed the combined evening viewers for the three networks over the past few years and the trend isn’t good.

Week of August 28, 2006: 23,380,000

Week of August 27, 2007: 21,310,000

Week of August 25, 2008: 20,290,000

Week of August 24, 2009: 20,330,000

Good luck to Diane Sawyer, though it’s tough to wonder if Charlie is really the last of the heavy hitters in that chair.

My Friday Nighttime At Nightline

The Nightline set is, to be kind, tiny. The street traffic behind the anchor plays off a server and is shown on a rear projection TV. Is nothing real?

When I came to WTNH the director of our evening newscasts was a young guy named Jeff Winn&#185. He had the thankless task of directing our newscasts on a chromakey set. This is much too complex to explain here except to say any mistake Jeff made was glaringly obvious to even a casual viewer. It was that obvious. Luckily, Jeff was good at what he did. Mistakes were few.

He left us and went on to bigger things. Again, too complex to explain here, plus if I thought about his career versus mine I’d openly weep. Jeff has seven Emmys, as do I. His are the much larger, heavier, impressive, national ones. Jeff won most of them directing “Real Sports” on HBO. He still does that on a monthly basis.

Jeff’s day night job is directing ABC News Nightline. Originally Ted Koppel’s nightly wrap-up of the Iranian Hostage Crisis and then a daily single subject half hour of hard news, Nightline post-Ted is flashier, lighter and more feature oriented. It’s also stronger in the ratings than it’s been in years, recently beating Letterman.

I’ve been meaning to watch Jeff direct for years but never had the chance. I went last night.

The drive to New York was speedy and without incident until the Bronx. What had been a wide open highway became a slow moving bumper-to-bumper grind. I broke free, headed down the West Side Highway and pulled into an open and totally legal parking space on Columbus Avenue directly across the street from ABC’s entrance.

Really–I found legal on-street parking in Manhattan. I’m available for autographs later.

When Nightline first went to its rotating three anchor configuration it came from a windowed studio above Times Square. Even now you can watch the traffic behind the anchor. Don’t be fooled (as I was). They moved around a year ago and now come from TV-3, the same studio as World News with Charlie Gibson. The Nightline set is, to be kind, tiny. The street traffic behind the anchor plays off a server and is shown on a rear projection TV. Is nothing real?

For much of the evening Jeff is ‘on a leash,’ even when there’s nothing to do. If a major story broke, he would direct live coverage across the full network. That is no small responsibility. ABC has standby staff just-in-case 24/7.

We took the grand tour to the control room passing through Nightline’s sparsely staffed offices. Most of the action happens here during the day. The show is anchored live, but the packages are mainly pre-produced at a more convenient hour. TV work isn’t as glamorous when you consider so much of it is “second shift.”

ABC’s New York headquarters is a confusing collection of mainly connected buildings on Manhattan’s West Side between 66th and 67th from Columbus Avenue to Central Park West. There are a few apartment buildings interspresed, but most of the block is ABC’s.

Back when I did some freelance work at the network (weather fill-ins on Good Morning America–you never call anymore–I’m crushed) I never ventured far from my studio (TV-2) lest I get lost! In some of the interconnections the floors don’t even line up!

The control room itself is very impressive with two rows of arena type seating, a few individual positions farther back and a separate audio booth. The production crew face a winged wall of large high definition flat panel monitors. Each monitor is split to show individual inputs as needed. Most are pretty standard cameras and servers, but I also saw tie-lines to Washington and Europe (feeding Arab language broadcasts back to New York last night).

Jeff sat down and with the technical director and assistant director went through the show’s scripts page-by-page making sure each input was properly marked and available. As far as I could tell only one small change was made during this run-through. A courtesy font for a photograph came positioned over the person’s face. It was moved to air in a less intrusive spot.

As 11:35 PM approached more and more people drifted in. By airtime there were around a dozen people at work. Actually, the show starts 15 seconds early as an animated countdown streams to the network. I’m hoping that’s a tradition carried over from the good old days, because by now the affiliates had better have synchronized clocks, wouldn’t you think?

One floor down Martin Bashir anchored. His only contact with the upstairs crew was electronic. I enjoyed when he read about someone being taken to the hospital and in his British English left out the article “the.” “He was taken to hospital,” was what the audience heard.

The show was flawless… at least it looked flawless to me. In many ways the production resembled a local newscast, but with longer packages, no live shots and more help. The producer even shuffled extra promo content in to help fill the show’s scheduled time.

Jeff and the team were relaxed and playful as the show aired. These are people working together every night. They know their jobs and at this level I suspect screw-ups aren’t tolerated long.

A little after midnight we were done.

&#185 – Our other director was Tom O’Brien, who moved out of directing to sales and then management. He is now general manager at WNBC in New York after a long stay as GM at KXAS Dallas.

How Time Slips Away

This past week in Birmingham, I told a few people about how I used to fill-in on Good Morning America. It’s been a while. What I didn’t realize was how long ago it really was.

I was searching for a tape tonight (never found it) and stumbled across an aircheck of my first GMA appearance. It was June 1, 1993. Good grief.

For a few years I was their go to guy and then… well, who knows why, I just fell out of favor.

Actually, it’s a weird story. I had just finished a full week of filling in on the weekday show (while also working nights in New Haven) and was back, on New Years morning, doing the ‘old’ Sunday show.

I finished a live shot in Times Square (across the street from where the studio is now located) and made my way back uptown to TV-2. I walked into the control room. The executive producer was sitting there in the back row. He turned to me and said, “You did a really good job this week. We’ll be seeing a lot more of you this year.”

As you might imagine, that was very good news. It didn’t take me long to call Helaine and tell her. I was juiced!

That was the last I heard from him!

Before long he was gone too. As new staff moved in I was no longer, “You did a really good job this week,” but just some guy from New Haven.

I still think about the fun I had and how I know I’d still be great for them. I’m afraid that train has left the station. That saddens me.

Of course I haven’t totally given up. If you’re friends with Ben Sherwood (GMA’s executive producer), put in a good word, won’t you?

Blogger’s addendum: The attached photo shows me with Joan Lunden and Charlie Gibson. Click here for a larger view. Don’t let the window fool you, we’re on the West Side of Manhattan.

I am holding a miniature helicopter and explaining Bernoulli’s principle. On the table are two plastic copter blades meant to fly when you spin them between your hands.