Move Against Barbara Walters Touches a Nerve

By Jim Rutenberg --
The phone rang unexpectedly a week ago Saturday morning in the home of Barbara Walters, the ABC News anchor. It was her boss, David Westin, the ABC News president. His opening salutation telegraphed trouble.

"I thought there was a death in the family," Ms. Walters said last week. "He was so somber."

It was not life or death; but in the world of network television news, it was the next - worst thing.

The network was moving her edition of "20/20" out of its Friday night time slot at 10 p.m. for a good part of the next television season to make way for a relatively low-rated dramatic series, "Once and Again," which is produced by ABC's corporate parent, the Walt Disney Company.

"I was amazed and disappointed," Ms. Walters said.

So were the rest of her colleagues.

ABC News is a famously factionalized place, full of intense rivalries and grudges that go back years (That was my interview!).

But the opera of the schedule change had a strange unifying effect inside the division, with Ms. Walters cast as a martyr in the great battle to defend news coverage, an irony of sorts because some ABC colleagues have long sniffed at what they consider her softer, show-business approach to news.

Self-preservation was on the minds of many. As one senior ABC News correspondent put it: "If they can move against Barbara, what's next? We always thought Barbara was sacrosanct."

But in the changing dynamics of broadcast television, not even Ms. Walters is sacrosanct. And her eviction from Friday night tapped into a growing sense in the news division of its waning relevance.

Storm clouds are overhead. Increasingly the networks, under advertiser pressure, are reaching out to younger consumers, and the news audience is a notoriously wrinkled crowd.

And although news and sports were once the primary programming a network could own, that is no longer true. Networks can now freely take stakes in entertainment shows, intensifying the Cane and Abel sibling rivalry between the news and entertainment divisions.

Meanwhile, in this arid economic environment, costs must be cut, so it is hard to justify huge outlays of cash for news gathering operations that drag down profits — which is one reason CBS News is discussing a possible operational merger with CNN (and why ABC News has let CNN know it might be interested in striking such an arrangement, too, a development reported by the Web site Inside.com).

Of course, news magazines are often moved around in the network schedules. For instance, CBS News has decided to move "48 Hours" into the Friday 10 p.m. time slot this fall. But "20/20" on Friday nights is considered to be as much of an institution by ABC News as is "60 Minutes" on Sunday nights by CBS News.

The "20/20" staff fears that by moving "20/20" to Wednesday nights for the first six weeks of the television season, then possibly taking it off the air for several weeks before returning it to Fridays at 10, ABC will cause confusion that will cost it not only viewers to CBS, but also important interviews.

"I don't think they understood how far we book in advance," Ms. Walters said, "which makes it difficult to stop and then pick up steam again."

Ms. Walters spent the week in clear conflict. She put on a brave face but nearly burst into tears during a staff meeting discussing the move. She put herself forward as a team player, but in an interview on Tuesday she let it be known that her contract had a reopener clause — the window is December — and that she would consider her options.

Why, news-staff members wondered, risk angering Ms. Walters to save "Once and Again," a marginal though critically acclaimed program that documents the struggles of divorcees with children in suburban Chicago and has Sela Ward and Billy Campbell as its stars?

Several division executives and correspondents saw in the move the changing times of network economics and politics.

Though "20/20" draws a larger overall audience than does "Once and Again" (11.4 million to 8.5 million), "Once and Again" has a larger audience of people between 18 and 49 (5.3 million to 4.7 million) — a demographic that is both increasingly coveted by advertisers and hard for news programs to attract.

Another point in favor of "Once and Again" is that Disney's Touchstone Television produces it. "Once and Again" would need to be shown on ABC for at least another year before it could be successfully sold into syndication — where the studio would make its real money on the program. Until 1995, federal regulations sharply limited the ability of parent companies of the major networks to own scripted programming.

Meanwhile, Disney makes additional money on the program because it is rebroadcast each week on Lifetime, the cable channel that the company owns in partnership with the Hearst Corporation.

Adding to this cornucopia of corporate synergy: the program's producers, Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, are also successful movie producers with films that have won Academy Awards two of the last three years: seven for "Shakespeare in Love" (distributed by Disney's Miramax), including best picture, and four for "Traffic" (distributed by USA Films), including best director and best supporting actor.

With all of this in mind, one senior news executive, who spoke on condition that his name not be used, said, "It's as if they've chosen Sela Ward over Barbara Walters."

For his part, Mr. Herskovitz sounded somewhat surprised at the reaction of the news division. "I think we've all had to face the vagaries of network television and news has to face as well that that's the world we live in," he said. "I think it's just the business."

Alex Wallau, the ABC president, said the move was purely about building an audience for "Once and Again." ABC programmers say that by moving it for a few weeks to Friday nights from Wednesday nights, when it faces stiff competition in NBC's "Law and Order," "Once and Again" will have a chance to catch on with a broader audience. Mr. Wallau said ABC obviously would not go to such trouble if it did not believe that "Once and Again" could grow significantly and that "20/20" could hold its own on Wednesdays and on Fridays after a possible several-week hiatus. And, he said, ABC will not keep "Once and Again" on the schedule if it fails to perform up to expectations.

Ultimately, Mr. Wallau said, the network wanted "Once and Again" to succeed because it is one of the only dramas about families on network television.

Despite those assertions, ABC News has remained suspicious about all that ABC is doing for "Once and Again" — and perhaps that should not be a surprise, considering recent developments there.

"20/20" is being shunted around the ABC schedule amid the backdrop of budget cuts and buyouts. In recent months, the division has declined to renew the contracts of some of its well-known correspondents, among them Sheila MacVicar, Sylvia Chase and Morton Dean, as part of an effort to win $15 million to $20 million in savings. Amid a request from Disney to cut its approximately $550 million budget still more, the division has offered buyouts that could result in the loss of seasoned editors and producers. The division may have to order some layoffs if the desired reductions are not achieved.

During a meeting in Washington last month, ABC News staff members told Robert A. Iger and Michael D. Eisner, Disney's top executives, that they thought the news division should not be cut in the same manner as other Disney divisions because it performs a public service. Ted Koppel, the ABC anchor, directly asked Mr. Eisner to agree that none of the 4,000 job cuts Disney had deemed necessary would be made at ABC News. The request was denied as Mr. Eisner said Disney animators could make a similar appeal — another reminder of the parent company's entertainment focus.

"There does seem to be something of a new reality," Peter Jennings said in an interview, "and the only thing everyone wants to say to Michael is that this is something of a public trust and we want them to continue to value what I call a public service." He added he is confident that the parent company understands this.

But ABC News is not alone in its belt-tightening. CNN, now part of AOL Time Warner , has cut 400 jobs . NBC News has also let go of some producers. The CBS News-CNN merger discussions are said to be continuing, though no decision is said to be near. Still, the possibility of such an agreement has people in network news worried over the prospect that CBS News might dismantle much of its news-gathering operation and rely on CNN's. Such a move, it is feared within ABC News, would prompt Disney to find a similar partnership.

And there is almost a sense that if Disney decided to do so, it would not necessarily do so in consultation with the news division itself. Some point to the way that the "20/20" scheduling change was handled.

The news division did not hear about the scheduling changes at "20/ 20" until the middle of the week of May 7 — and at that point, its executives were told that it was only a very remote possibility, if even that. On Saturday, despite the protestations of Mr. Westin, the ABC News president, word of the move was delivered as a fait accompli, according to executives familiar with the situation.

Some believe that because the ABC executive suite has been moved from New York to Burbank, Calif., the news division was less aware of the prime-time scheduling process than it was in years past.

"There are those who will say that those people out there on the West Coast have less sensitivity to the news division than when the corporation was based here," Mr. Jennings said.

But it is not as if the news division does not still have quite a presence on ABC. Between programs like "Good Morning America," "Nightline," "World News Tonight," "20/ 20" and "Primetime Thursday," it is responsible for more than 30 hours of programming each week.

And there could actually be a benefit for Ms. Walters in the schedule change, should it result in a hiatus for "20/20."

"Eisner told me it was a great opportunity to go for seven weeks to the south of France," she said. "I told him I'd never had a vacation like that during the season."__nytimes.com (May 21, 2001)