Plains-born Tom Brokaw signing off

By Kay McFadden
Seattle Times TV critic

NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw

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As if.

This Wednesday, Brokaw signs off for the last time as anchor of the "NBC Nightly News." He will not be given a chance to unobtrusively fade.

Already, the event's been greeted with the kind of monumental assessment summoned for departing heads of state. Terms like "end of an era" — underscored by Dan Rather's impending resignation as anchor of "CBS Evening News" — have been thickly applied, as if to seal this occasion in the amber of national memory.

There is something to merit such treatment.

It lies not in the raw data of Nielsen but in the values of a heartland America that has reasserted itself in the 21st century, joining Brokaw to a pantheon of plain-spoken figures that lean on tradition and instinct.

Timeline 1940: Born in Webster, S.D., Feb. 6. 1960: Newscaster at KTIV, Sioux City, Iowa. 1962: Joins Omaha NBC affiliate KMTV. 1962: Marries Meredith Lynn Auld, former Miss South Dakota, on Aug. 17. 1966: Joins Los Angeles bureau of NBC. 1973: Named NBC White House correspondent. 1976: Named host of "Today" show. 1983: Becomes anchor of "NBC Nightly News." 1998: Publishes "The Greatest Generation" (Random House), profiles of Americans who grew up during the Great Depression and experienced World War II; the book goes on to sell more than 2 million copies. 1999: People magazine names him one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world. 2004: Steps down as NBC anchor and signs contract that will keep him as a correspondent at NBC through 2014. Source: NBC, MSNBC.com; compiled by Seattle Times staff

"While he's lived in New York and Los Angeles, he's never lost his Midwest roots," says Dave Lougee, president of KING-TV and a longtime executive at NBC affiliates. "He was the first to push outside the I-95 corridor and cover the mainstream, connecting the two coasts with the center.

"Without trying to be, he was a uniter."

Perhaps that's why Brokaw has been mentioned as an ideal political candidate, a rumor to which he gives the well-practiced reply, "I'm running for cover, not office."

On the other hand, an eBay shopper could buy his autographed photo for $13 last week. With fewer people watching network evening news, even the man going out on top after 21 years flies low on the radar that measures starlets and Schwarzenegger.

That might be just dandy with Brokaw. Amid the hoopla over his departure, the 64-year-old South Dakota native has retained his common-sense perspective, expressed in those famously gruff tones and sibilant consonants.

During a telephone interview last week, he gave the equivalent of a snort when asked about this end-of-an-era business.

"When Huntley and Brinkley broke up, they thought network news was over," he said. "When Walter Cronkite retired, they thought it was over.

Relevance to viewers

"As long as we provide a broadcast that's relevant to people's lives, that tells them what they need to know, there will be a reason for the evening news to exist," he continued, pointedly adding: "What I've always admired about the American public is it has always had a long-curve view of life."

Point taken. Despite their current obsession with his history, media critics haven't always judged Brokaw kindly. He's been called a softball interviewer compared with Rather and not nearly as analytical as ABC anchor Peter Jennings.

Conversely, Brokaw's two-decade relationship with viewers has been one of growing connection, a feat made more impressive by the overall state of network news.

Competition from cable channels and the Internet has battered ABC, CBS and NBC. The Big Three's total nightly-news viewership fell from 40.7 million households in 1993 to 25.9 million in 2004, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Yet over that period and under Brokaw, NBC bled the least. The "Nightly News" had 13.3 million households in 1993; it has just over 10 million now.

	EVAN AGOSTINI / GETTY IMAGES Flanked by ABC News anchor Peter Jennings, left, and CBS News anchor Dan Rather, NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw was honored for his years in broadcasting at The Museum of Television and Radio's annual gala in February in New York.

As audiences for ABC and CBS declined, NBC caught up, starting an unbroken run of first-place finishes in 1999.

Capping it all was NBC's 2004 election night, notable for both a No. 1 rating and for the many guests who turned their interviews into an impromptu Brokaw appreciation fest.

The evening was a triumph for many NBC stations; in Seattle alone, KING-TV reached nearly the combined ratings of ABC's KOMO-TV and CBS' KIRO-TV.

But what numbers can't do is distill the essence of Tom Brokaw. To find that, you have to begin with a young man whose blue-collar background, rugged good looks and charming ways brought him many victories — and one early, character-forming crisis.

Small-town boy

Brokaw was born Feb. 6, 1940, in the tiny community of Webster, S.D. His father, a construction worker, and his mother, a clerk and frustrated journalist, moved from one place to another in the state until settling in the comparatively large town of Yankton.

Young Tom was ambitious: a radio DJ and then newscaster in the late 1950s. He entered the University of Iowa, only to drift for two years, majoring in what he called "beer and coeds." He got one TV job, then was fired. He was in and out of classes.

Similar to another well-known success story — think of President Bush — it took a woman's threatened departure to help snap Brokaw back into form.

	Brian Williams succeeds Brokaw as anchor.

He received a "Dear John" letter from high-school sweetheart Meredith Auld, herself a born achiever who later became Miss South Dakota 1959.

"The woman I've now been married happily to and deeply in love with for over 40 years had completely written me off," Brokaw said. "I wanted to win back Meredith's esteem."

Brokaw would never stumble again. After putting in time at stations in Omaha, Neb., Atlanta and Los Angeles, he joined NBC in 1973 as White House correspondent. The Watergate scandal and resignation of President Nixon helped make his career.

The reward was co-hosting NBC's "Today" show, then in ratings and personnel tumult. He began in August 1976 and eventually was paired with then-unknown Jane Pauley, a newscaster with Midwestern roots like himself. The two were a huge success; Brokaw's easy affability went over well.

Going solo

It was a quality he brought to co-anchoring the "Nightly News" with Roger Mudd in 1982 and it stood out enough to give him the solo job the following year, then the title of managing editor.

He scored many coups revered in journalism: several Emmys for the newscast and award-winning interviews with Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan.

But Brokaw's "Today" association counted against him with critics. Perhaps eager to show his hard-news side, he undertook some specials deemed fiascoes.

A 1989 production, "Black Athletes: Fact and Fiction," was condemned for seeming to play into the very stereotypes it sought to discount. Another, "The Abortion Dilemma: Rights and Lives," featured Brokaw's "barking at times like an accuser" at his guest panel, according to one critic.

Nonetheless, "Nightly News" ratings steadily climbed. By the mid-'90s, with CBS gutted from cost cutting, the evening news was a two-network race between ABC and NBC.

Certainly, viewers could not have had a more diverse choice than the styles offered by Jennings, Rather and Brokaw. The first, cool and urbane; the second, aggressive and crusading; the third, down to earth and intimate.

By such measures, it's probably no accident that while Jennings and Rather have derived their strength from the two coasts, Brokaw and the "Nightly News" built their popularity in what nowadays are called the Red States.

This appeal irritates some detractors, who say Brokaw projects a rah-rah Americanism that doesn't instruct or jolt the audience. It's a familiar complaint: In a review of "The Greatest Generation," Slate co-editor Jacob Weisberg accused Brokaw of "a romanticizing tendency that eclipses all logic and fact."

But Brokaw's bond has not been feigned. The same unvarnished respect he has for the generation that went to war in the 1940s is on display when he talks about denizens of middle America.

"They have a pretty worldly view because they're living in a world economy," he said. "We as news people have to lift up our sights as well."

Brokaw's gift for rapport, of course, cannot be taught.

In the catchy words of Syracuse University's Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television: "He's the kind of guy you could invite over for meatloaf."

That raises the issue of whom Americans will dine with in the future.

With Brokaw's departure Wednesday from the "Nightly News" and Rather's exit in March, some expect the culture of network news to shift, or perhaps disappear.

Orchestrated succession

But dire predictions appear premature. NBC has orchestrated a careful two-year run-up to Brian Williams, who will take over as anchor Thursday.

At CBS, "60 Minutes" correspondent Scott Pelley and White House correspondent John Roberts are front-runners to follow Rather. ABC and Jennings see opportunity in Brokaw's exit.

For Brokaw, the future is almost now. Time will be lavished on horseback riding and fly fishing at his beloved ranch in Montana, though he's also got a 10-year contract to produce and host documentaries for NBC.

And words of advice for his successor?

Forced into the role of older sage, Brokaw reverts to homegrown individualism. Scratch that; he never left it.

"Don't read the columns," he suggested. "Stay away from other people defining you. Define yourself."

Kay McFadden: kmcfadden@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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