Brokaw Steps Down After 21 Years as NBC Anchor
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Telling his audience “we’ve been through a lot together,” Tom Brokaw bid farewell as anchor of the “NBC Nightly News” on Wednesday, becoming the first of the big three stars of U.S. network news for the last 20 years to retire.
In what media analysts saw as heralding the end of an era for the traditional news anchor, Dan Rather of the CBS “Evening News” has said he would step down next March, leaving Peter Jennings of ABC’s “World News Tonight” as the last veteran anchorman.
“We’ve been through a lot together,” Brokaw told viewers at the end of his final broadcast in the hot seat. “Through dark days and nights and seasons of hope and joy. Whatever the story I had only one objective — to get it right.”
“When I failed it was personally painful,” he added.
“The enduring lessons through the decades are these: It’s not the questions that get us in trouble, it’s the answers. And just as important no one person has all the answers,” he said.
Brokaw, 64, began his last day as anchor with an emotional appearance on the “Today” show which he once hosted, recalling his career from his first job on a local station in Nebraska to covering the White House during the Watergate scandal.
First as co-anchor in 1982 and then taking over as sole “Nightly News” anchor from John Chancellor in 1983, the no-nonsense South Dakotan with a flat accent won all of broadcast journalism’s top awards including several Emmys.
But it was a work of history that Brokaw said he was most proud of: his book “The Greatest Generation,” based on hundreds of letters and interviews with survivors of the D-Day landings in 1944 in northwest France.
Brokaw has signed a 10-year contract keeping him with the network as a documentary producer and host through 2014, but he said he expects to spend more time fishing and enjoying his grandchildren in the years ahead.
TEARS AND THANKS
At the end of his “Today” show appearance, colleagues toasted him with champagne and the silver-haired, soft-spoken newsman shed a tear. Signing off at the end of the evening news, he kept his composure: “You’ll see Brian Williams here tomorrow night, and I’ll see you along the way.”
Paul Levinson, head of Fordham University’s media department, said the rise of 24-hour cable news channels and news on the Internet from both bloggers and traditional media sources had changed the way people consume news.
“The news anchor spoke to a different kind of America than we are today,” he said. “The evening TV newscast, in which the family gathers around, is becoming … a piece of history.”
Brokaw is credited by NBC with leading the network to the top of the news ratings since 1997, but ABC, owned by the Walt Disney Co., has made strides in closing the gap.
NBC News president Neal Shapiro acknowledged that “Nightly News” was likely to lose some viewers as Brokaw departs.
Shapiro dismissed the notion that Williams was a relative lightweight compared to Brokaw, calling him “a great reporter.”
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