Rather to Host His Own Farewell Tribute on CBS
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – No sooner will Dan Rather bid viewers a final good night as anchor of the CBS Evening News than he will be back on the air to lead viewers through a retrospective of his 50 years in broadcast journalism.
CBS News said on Thursday that an hourlong special, “Dan Rather: A Reporter Remembers,” will be telecast on March 9, at 8 p.m. EST, within an hour of his stepping down as host and managing editor of the “Evening News.”
The broadcasts come exactly 24 years after Rather assumed the anchor chair from legendary newsman Walter Cronkite.
The prime-time special is billed as a “candid memoir of Rather’s extraordinary career, told in his own words.” CBS said it will span the past five decades of his life and include never-before-seen archival footage.
A network spokeswoman said Rather would address the controversy surrounding his now-discredited “60 Minutes” report last September questioning the military service of President Bush.
The program will undoubtedly highlight the more celebrated points of Rather’s career, including his coverage of the Kennedy assassination in 1963, the tumultuous Democratic National Convention of 1968 and the Watergate scandal during the 1970s, not to mention testy on-air exchanges with President Nixon and then-Vice President George H. W. Bush.
It remained to be seen how CBS would handle Rather’s less flattering moments, such as walking off the set in 1987 after a tennis match pre-empted the start of a newscast, or the jokes he endured after being assaulted on the streets of Manhattan by a man who asked him: “Kenneth, what’s the frequency?”
While TV retrospectives have become ubiquitous on prime time, paying homage to figures ranging from Johnny Carson to “Laverne & Shirley,” a self-hosted special paying tribute to a living broadcast journalist on the day of his retirement is rare.
“I don’t remember them doing one like this for Walter Cronkite, but you could bet they would if Walter Cronkite were retiring today,” said Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University’s Center for the Study of Popular Television.
On the other hand, Thompson said, “He (Rather) has got a lot of good clips.
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