TV News Icons Leaving at Rapid Pace

Monday, April 4th 2005, 9:43 am

By: News On 6

NEW YORK (AP) _ A remarkable amount of TV news star power has dimmed over the past eight months: Barbara Walters, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and, just last week, Ted Koppel. Each has left, or announced a departure from, the jobs that gave them the most stature, reminding television viewers how the business has changed in the years since they became news celebrities.

``I think it's more than a changing of the guard,'' said Deborah Potter, a former CBS News correspondent and executive director of the think tank Newslab. ``That would suggest that the next set of troops that come in would be waging the same battle.''

Koppel said Thursday that he would leave ABC News and ``Nightline,'' the broadcast he originated 25 years ago, at the end of the year. Brokaw and Rather both left as evening news anchors at NBC and CBS, and Barbara Walters gave up her perch at ``20/20.''

None of these journalists have retired. But none will ever again command the audiences they did at the peaks of their career.

Each began their network news careers in a different era, the 1960s, when television was new and flush with money and possibilities. Americans could see, not just hear about or read, the news _ and CBS, NBC and ABC were the only places on the dial to go.

Koppel's position of influence came with ``Nightline,'' which began as nightly special reports on an international crisis and became a tough broadcast that tackled a single issue each night. Brokaw and Rather moved into what had always been the dominant positions in network news.

The careers of the three men became ascendant in the early 1980s _ Walters had shown her dominance as an interviewer earlier _ at the same time a new network was in its infancy in an Atlanta studio.

``Even though Rather came in at the time CNN started, he still had the whiff of the old network era around him, and so did Brokaw,'' said Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University.

With the rise of cable networks and the Internet, the audience for each of their programs faded dramatically. ``Nightline'' reaches fewer than 4 million people a night this year; a decade ago the viewership was 6.3 million, according to Nielsen Media Research.

While ``20/20'' is still on the air and ABC News promises ``Nightline'' will continue, the long-term viability of both programs is in serious question without their stars.

``I don't think that anyone will have the stature that any of these anchors have had for the last 25 years,'' said Joseph Angotti, chairman of the broadcast program at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.

``And it isn't because any of the people coming along now aren't as good or aren't as dynamic,'' he said. ``I think the public's fascination with personalities on newscasts is beginning to fade, and it's all because of the fragmentation that has taken place. There are too many anchors.''

Paul Levinson of Fordham University's communications department said Koppel's departure marks ``another nail in the coffin for the three traditional networks as sources of news for Americans.''

Still, it's possible to overstate the loss of influence at TV news outlets.

It was only 3 1/2 ago, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, that Brokaw, Rather and ABC's Peter Jennings were praised for helping draw Americans together and recover from a national trauma.

Network morning show anchors, most notably Katie Couric and Matt Lauer on NBC, have greater prominence now than ever, due largely to changing lifestyles that make them the national news source of choice for many more Americans.

Jennings remains on the job and NBC's Brian Williams has inherited Brokaw's spot at the top of the nightly news ratings.

``The way Brian Williams has so comfortably slipped into Tom Brokaw's chair is probably an indication that there is not likely to be dramatic change,'' Thompson said.

But in 20 years will people be talking about Williams the same way they talk about his predecessor now?

It's all relative; when Rather took over for the legendary Walter Cronkite, and Brokaw started at ``Nightly News,'' many naysayers said they would never live up to their predecessors.

``When Barry Bonds hit his first home run, who would have been expecting that in several years he would be hitting his 700th?'' said Charles Bierbauer, a former CNN correspondent and now dean of the journalism school at the University of South Carolina.

CNN's Anderson Cooper, NBC's Lester Holt and Fox News Channel's Shepard Smith are younger anchors with potential for bigger roles. Elizabeth Vargas and George Stephanopoulos are being groomed at ABC.