Goodnight, Dan! Rather drops anchor
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Dan Rather, whose nearly 24-year tenure as anchor of the "CBS Evening News" was clouded by a recent questionable report on President Bush’s National Guard service, said Tuesday he will step down in March.
Rather said his last broadcast as anchor would be March 9, the 24th anniversary of when he assumed the position from Walter Cronkite.
The 73-year-old newsman said he will continue to work for CBS, as a correspondent for both editions of "60 Minutes."
"I have always been and remain a 'hard news’ investigative reporter at heart," he said in a statement. "I now look forward to pouring my heart into that kind of reporting full time."
He made no mention of the National Guard story in announcing the change, saying he had agreed with CBS executives last summer to leave sometime after the Nov. 2 election. But he was forced to fight for his professional life after anchoring a September "60 Minutes Wednesday" story about Bush’s service that turned out to be based on allegedly forged documents.
"The decision to leave the anchor chair is something separate and apart from dealing with the ('60 Minutes’) storm," he told The Associated Press.
A report on what went wrong with the National Guard story, from a two-man independent investigative panel, is due imminently.
CBS didn’t talk about potential successors. Newsmen John Roberts and Scott Pelley have long been considered in-house candidates, but the network will also probably look outside.
Rather has been with CBS News for more than four decades and made his name as a reporter covering the Nixon White House.
"He has been an eyewitness to the most important events for more than 40 years and played a crucial role in keeping the American public informed about those events and their larger significance," CBS Chairman Leslie Moonves said.
Rather’s announcement comes eight days before his NBC rival, Tom Brokaw, steps down as "Nightly News" anchor and is replaced by Brian Williams.
The triumvirate of Rather, Brokaw and ABC’s Peter Jennings has ruled network news for more than two decades. Rather dominated ratings after taking over for Cronkite during the 1980s, but he was eclipsed first by Jennings and then by Brokaw. His evening news broadcast generally runs a distant third in the ratings each week.
His hard news style was mixed with a folksy Texan style that led him to rattle off homespun phrases on Election Night. But odd incidents dogged him: In 1987 he walked off the set, leaving CBS with dead air, to protest a decision to let a tennis match delay the news. And his claim that he was accosted on the street by a strange man saying, "What’s the frequency, Kenneth?" led rock band R.E.M. to write a song with the same name.
Brokaw said Monday that he was "pleased for Dan that he’s come to a conclusion about his own life, as I have in my case."
"Dan and I have known each other competitively and personally for a long, long time," Brokaw said. "Occasionally on the competitive side, it would be tiny bumps in the road, but when you think of all that we’ve been through, we have a pretty strong relationship. So I wish him well."
ABC News said Jennings was traveling and could not immediately be reached for comment.
CBS thought it had an important scoop with the National Guard story this past September, reporting that President Bush had received preferential treatment to get into the guard and stay in the United States during the Vietnam War, and had failed to satisfy the requirements of his service.
But critics immediately questioned the story, saying a document purportedly written by Bush’s late squadron leader appeared to be a fake. Rather apologized before CBS appointed the investigative panel.
"We made a mistake in judgment," Rather said, "and for that I am sorry."
CBS is part of Viacom Inc., whose shares were up 39 cents at $35.88 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange. It traded at a 52-week low of $32.56 a share in August.
Originally published on November 23, 2004
nydailynews.com
Rather Quitting as CBS Anchor in Abrupt Move
By JACQUES STEINBERG and BILL CARTER
Published: November 24, 2004
Dan Rather announced yesterday that he would step down next year as anchor and managing editor of "CBS Evening News." The move came two months after he acknowledged fundamental flaws in a broadcast report that raised questions about President Bush's National Guard service.
Mr. Rather's last broadcast will be on March 9, the 24th anniversary of the night he succeeded Walter Cronkite. He plans to continue to work full time at CBS News, as a correspondent for the Sunday and Wednesday editions of "60 Minutes."
The network has yet to select a successor to Mr. Rather, who is 73, but two CBS executives said that the front-runner was John Roberts, 48, CBS News's chief White House correspondent, who also serves as anchor of the network's Sunday evening news program.
Though Mr. Rather and senior CBS executives had begun last summer to discuss a possible departure date within the next couple of years, Mr. Rather's announcement yesterday signaled an abrupt end to the nearly quarter-century that he spent in one of the most visible jobs in broadcast journalism. [Page C1.]
Both he and Leslie Moonves, CBS's chairman and co-president of its parent company, Viacom, emphasized that the timing of the announcement was dictated by events largely out of their control.
In an interview yesterday, Mr. Rather said that he and Mr. Moonves believed that it was important that he make his announcement well before the forthcoming release of a report by an independent panel investigating the journalistic breakdowns that led CBS News to broadcast and then vigorously defend the National Guard news segment.
"I wish it were not happening while this panel is looking into the '60 Minutes' weekday story," Mr. Rather said at his office at the CBS Broadcast Center on West 57th Street in Manhattan. "One reason I wanted to do this now was to make the truth clear - this is separated from that."
Mr. Rather said the most intense round of conversations among himself; his agent, Richard Leibner; and Mr. Moonves began about 10 days ago at Mr. Moonves's office at Viacom's headquarters in Times Square. At a certain point, Mr. Leibner excused himself and Mr. Rather spoke alone to Mr. Moonves.
"Dan was very emotional," Mr. Moonves recalled yesterday. "Clearly, this job and CBS News mean a lot to him. It was a very hard decision for him. Dan said to me, 'I'd like to do this on my own terms.' We totally supported him."
Mr. Rather - after a series of conversations last weekend with his wife, Jean, and his grown son and daughter - said he called Mr. Moonves, who was in California, on Monday afternoon and told him that he had made up his mind to go. In a measure of the awkward predicament in which CBS finds itself, Mr. Moonves said he felt compelled to inform the investigative panel of Mr. Rather's plans.
The volatile endgame surrounding Mr. Rather's announcement of his departure was in many ways true to the ups and downs of his career. He vaulted to fame, in part, as a CBS correspondent who was stationed along President John F. Kennedy's motorcade route in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, the day the president was assassinated. But the dogged reporting he demonstrated that day also played a role in his most highly publicized confrontations.
These included a clash with President Richard M. Nixon during a White House news conference at the height of the Watergate scandal and a tense live interview in 1988 with George H. W. Bush, who was then vice president, where Mr. Rather observed, "You've made us hypocrites in the face of the world."
Such comments, and others, made Mr. Rather a lightning rod for conservative critics who complained that the mainstream news media were too liberal. But it was not just conservatives who sometimes found Mr. Rather too hot for the medium of television.
While often folksy and gentlemanly, his frequently tense on-air bearing was cast as a turnoff by some television critics. Many of them gave him little chance in 1981 of holding on to Mr. Cronkite's dominance in the ratings. Initially they were wrong: Mr. Rather proceeded to finish first for the next seven seasons, ending in 1989. But his broadcast's ratings have dropped fairly steadily ever since.
Mr. Rather is departing at a moment of generational transition at the top of the network news divisions, as their audiences age steadily and their flagship programs continue to lose viewers. Next Wednesday, Tom Brokaw, 64, will deliver his last broadcast as anchor of "NBC Nightly News," the highest rated of the three evening newscasts. He will be succeeded the next night by Brian Williams, 45.
Both Mr. Rather and Mr. Moonves said in separate interviews that they went out of their way to time the announcement so it would not distract from Mr. Brokaw's departure.
"My feeling was that Tom should have his moment leaving the chair," Mr. Rather said. "Insofar as it's possible to do so, don't take any of that light; don't mix it up with that."
"I would say if Tom were not leaving next week," he added, "we'd probably have waited until next week to do it."
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