"Megyn Kelly Today" is not off to such a wonderful start

Scariest thing for me was going to the national RTNDA (Radio and Television News Directors) convention back in the late-80s and realizing at 30, I was already older than most of the attendees. Young anchors don't stay young forever, and the competition gets fiercer and fiercer with every step up the ladder. That's why flacking is such a viable career choice after awhile -- a very few make the big time, and fewer still make a living like exmediahack.

Broadcast is very much like the minor leagues (not that it didn't use to work in print as well). Work your way up if you can, but know there's always another crop of desperate new college graduates willing to work for less than you make.

 

That last paragraph captures it perfectly. Like minor league baseball.

I started at 21 to try and get to ESPN. That was my “show”. A friend of mine from those early days did get there — he sacrificed a little bit more than I did to get better and, if you put a head-to-head in a sports anchor contest at age 29, he was a little better than me. He beat me out for our first job out of college — I beat him out a year later for our respective second jobs and then our careers went in different geographical directions.

Now he’s making high 6 figures in Bristol and I’ve been out of sports for 15 years. That’s how close the margin is.

But... I’m still carving out a very good living. I’ve come to the reality that I’ll probably never clear 150-200k to anchor the news somewhere but that’s okay, too. My house will be paid off in a few years and then I can move where I want (warmer and, yes, I’ll even take less money to do it). I’ll always be curious about news and getting the info out. When I’m 60 or so, if I haven’t been fired and kicked out of TV news, I’ll probably work behind the scenes in relative anonymity. Not in formal management but writing newscasts — something I love doing.

 

At 15, I wanted to replace Ernie Harwell at WJR or Sid Collins at IMS. Neither happened.

I made it to Sacramento/Raleigh in radio news. (AAA)
I made it to Durham in print. (AA)
I made it to Turner Broadcasting in digital.

At other times, I sold men's socks, moved office furniture, answered phones at a janitorial supply company, worked as a security guard, delivered newspapers and spent 10 days as an IHOP busboy.

I figured out early on, I'll never write or say anything that will outlive me. But I loved telling stories, and I was good enough at it to retire on my terms.

 

I was kind of stunned to learn top end as a local anchor at a major market is about $800k. Anchors were making that 20 years ago, not much less than that 30 years ago.

 

It remains amazing to me that the big time network anchor essentially went extinct -- not simply because the job became less important, but largely because there just isn't anyone with that skill and gravity anymore. Brian Williams was sort of the last of the breed. (Lester Holt is pretty good, so that may be a little unfair -- but at this stage Lester is alone.)

Glor is not good. (From my understanding he's also largely pre-taped because they can't trust him to read live.) I've seen little of Muir but he always strikes me as a mediocre fictional depiction of a smarmy anchor.

It used to be there were a few people who were good and just waiting for their shot -- like Williams and Holt. That bench depth is totally gone.

 

Part of the end of the era was the ratings didn't justify the expense. One of the reasons CBS dumped Scott Pelley from the anchor desk. Also, how many times do people actually tune in and see a network's lead anchor (outside of the newscast) maybe three or four times a year depending on the number of tragedies and whether its an election year or not.
And ad buyers would much rather meet with Sheldon from Big Bang Theory or Tony Romo than some guy they never watch any way.

 

The local sports guys here probably made in the seven figures 20 or 25 years ago. Not so much now.

 

How much of the decline of the superanchor (in the mold of Brokaw, Jennings and Rather) is a result of the growth of the cable nets?

 

I watched the ABC nightly news because of Jennings. He wasn’t afraid to acknowledge their mistakes and flaws, which made me trust what he said was the truth as best as he could report it. After he died, I moved to NBC. Liked Williams, but respect Holt more, although I wish he made his reporters be tougher than they are. Calling a lie a lie shouldn’t be that hard.

 

The next Walter Cronkite isn't walking through that door. Nobody's getting the wealth of experience needed to carry that kind of gravitas any more.

The cable news networks definitely siphoned off talent from the Big Three. The fragmentation of the audience certainly has a lot to do with it. The availability of instant updates via the Internet/digital world contributed. Then there's the pure fact that today's generation doesn't sit around the dinner table at 6:30 p.m. with the TV news on.

 

It's not an issue of expense. It's an issue of not having any good anchors.

Scott Pelley wasn't fired because he was too expensive. Scott Pelley was fired because he sucks. He was replaced by a guy who sucks, too. I give Jeff Glor another year before they find another bland white guy to replace him.

 

Ted Koppel killed it. He took sanctimony and self righteous preening to a level never imagined. Cronkite, Huntley and Brinkley their generation and the earlier one knew they were smart but also knew they needed to show humility and even be humble, if only by the events.

Koppel creates Nightline and destroyed Carter because Ted thought that Jimmy was unworthy of being covered. Carter was not a successful president but Nightline and its focus on the hostage crisis impaled his presidency with a stake no mortal could survive. And the more Koppel hammered the stake, the more godlike Koppel thought he was.. smug is not self confident and Ted was smug. The 24/7 coverage of a story that needs more than 60 minutes including commercials to solve started the ball rolling. And koppel’s treatment of Reagan foreshadowed the national media’s treatment of trump. For all the bias of the media, if Reagan and trump was covered like Hillary Clinton neither man would be president.
And the line to Hannity starts with Koppel.