Next Month With George and Tom
With a New Producer In, ABC's 'This Week' Roundtable Is Out
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 25, 2003; Page C01
Over breakfast at the Four Seasons several months ago, Tom Bettag had what he calls his "first date" with George Stephanopoulos and tried to decide whether there would be a second.
The veteran "Nightline" producer had been asked to take over the former Clintonite's struggling Sunday morning show, "This Week," and he was blunt about what was at stake.
"It's going to be hard for you to have me messing around with stuff you put in there," Bettag told Stephanopoulos. If the larger "Nightline" staff took charge, "there's a whole ego issue here. . . . You will no longer have people you can call 'my people.' "
Stephanopoulos agreed to a lasting relationship, and the ABC program is expected to relaunch Sept. 7 with a new set, fancy graphics and one glaring omission: The journalists' roundtable, the opinionated give-and-take that has been the program's signature for 22 years, has been axed.
"You can now see roundtables 24 hours a day on three cable networks," Bettag says. "Whatever they're going to say, you've already heard a thousand times." The gabfests also encourage viewers to say that "these journalists just think they know everything. No wonder I hate them."
Stephanopoulos says he's "excited" about a new approach that will stress reporting above all. "The whole notion of more facts, more analysis and less punditry is something I'm very comfortable with," he says. "It's sort of where my strengths have always been. We can really create something new here."
The dropping of the roundtable means Bettag has had to find new roles for house conservative George Will, the last remaining member of the original show launched by David Brinkley, and panelists Michel Martin and Newsweek columnist Fareed Zakaria. Bettag says the three will still appear periodically -- by themselves -- for debriefing sessions with Stephanopoulos that will stress their reporting and analysis, not opinion-mongering. Other ABC News staffers will also pop up for these chats -- including "Nightline" correspondents and, on occasion, Ted Koppel -- along with reporters from other news organizations.
In addition, Will, perhaps the show's best-known contributor because of his syndicated column and longevity on television, will join Stephanopoulos for some interviews with major newsmakers -- an approach that had been abandoned when Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts ran the show because it was considered too cluttered.
The program, which may get a new name, is obviously looking for a boost in the ratings one year after the former Clinton White House aide took the helm. "This Week" has slipped from second to third place this year, with 2.6 million viewers, trailing Tim Russert's "Meet the Press" on NBC (4.4 million) and Bob Schieffer's "Face the Nation" on CBS (2.8 million).
Stephanopoulos promises "more variety over the course of the hour," not just with his reports from the field but on topics ranging from "cultural issues" to "religion in politics" to "business and economics." For Bettag, the key is better production values -- from pictures and quotations of the week to glitzy graphics, even a female narrator instead of a booming baritone -- to avoid what he calls the "ponderously slow" pace of Sunday morning talk shows.
"I don't think people tune in and say, 'God, I want to hear what Treasury Secretary Snow says,' " Bettag explains. The shows have an insider feel because "one of the things they're trying to do is to make a headline for Monday morning. That's often to the detriment of viewers."
Bettag, 58, is a heavy hitter behind the scenes, having served as personal producer for Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and Koppel. His goal, he says, is not just to revitalize the Sunday show but to groom Stephanopoulos, 42, as an ABC superstar for the coming decades.
"George Stephanopoulos is capable of addressing a different generation," Bettag says. "George unfortunately has been put in the position of doing a copycat show."
He recalls how the late ABC president Roone Arledge reinvented Sunday morning with the 1981 launch of "This Week With David Brinkley," but says the genre has grown stale over time. While professing great respect for Russert and Schieffer, he says the text-heavy graphics and lack of video make such programs sound like radio.
Bettag got his chance when he agreed to succeed the program's producer, Jon Banner, who is now executive producer of "World News Tonight."
The back story here involves "Nightline," which Bettag has produced for 12 years. He and Koppel signed five-year contracts in 2000 "to really build a succession and make way for another generation." This is beginning to happen, says Bettag, with the emergence of Chris Bury as Koppel's principal substitute, but the show -- especially after its near-death experience of almost being replaced by David Letterman -- has been looking for new sources of revenue through partnerships with other networks.
Putting the "Nightline" staff in charge of "This Week," Bettag admits, "has a lot to do with the Letterman thing" and impressing ABC's corporate owners at Disney. "If there's a question about the value of what 'Nightline' does, this makes 'Nightline' a more valuable unit to the corporation."
Under normal circumstances, moving to Sunday morning would be a "demotion," says Bettag, but he's happy to yield the "Nightline" reins to Leroy Sievers, his co-executive producer. "By this point Leroy Sievers is so strong that the last thing he needs is me looking over his shoulder. Ninety-five percent of my time in this first year will be spent on getting 'This Week' up and running."
Bettag often records the Sunday chatter on TiVo so he can play tennis, and finds the talking-head format so static that he often skims the newspaper or pays bills while they're on. "All television doesn't have to look alike. If you put the Sunday shows up on the monitors, the extent to which they look and sound and feel exactly alike is quite stunning."
Now Bettag is trying to channel Arledge, who revamped both sports and news: "The producer in me, hearing the Roone voice, says there's a way to do this in a fresher, smarter, better-produced way."
So why did Stephanopoulos agree, after that uncertain first date, to gamble his future on a man he barely knew?
"He's a legend," Stephanopoulos says of Bettag. "In our world, he's a superstar. Everyone said he's the smartest producer you can find."
One Strike and You're Out
The Sacramento Bee has fired sportswriter Jim Van Vliet for giving the impression he was filing a story on a San Francisco Giants game from Pacific Bell Park when he was actually watching it on television. What's more, the Bee says in an apology, Van Vliet used old quotes from other media outlets without attribution. |
