Posted by Bud on July 30, 2010 at 17:40:09:
Kurtis, Jacobson offer a bridge to WBBM-Ch. 2's past and future
Channel 2 news bringing back legendary newscasters Bill Kurtis and Walter Jacobson for 6 p.m. broadcast
Phil Rosenthal
Chicago Tribune Media
July 30, 2010
The newest thing in Chicago TV news is also the oldest.
It's not pretty, but it's surreal.
WBBM-Ch. 2 announced Thursday it is bringing back Bill Kurtis and Walter Jacobson to anchor its 6 p.m. weeknight news, effective Sept. 1, in the hope they will help revive the ratings, relevance and respect that marked their original 1973-82 run on the CBS station.
This was also the hope when Channel 2 reunited them on the anchor desk from 1985 to '89, and they couldn't quite pull it off. But it's 21 years later, and reverence for the earlier Kurtis-Jacobson era — like the hole from which the station has yet to emerge — remains formidable.
Their role is different this time. Kurtis, who will turn 70 less than three weeks after his Channel 2 return and will continue to head two outside companies, and Jacobson, whose 73rd birthday was Wednesday, are not necessarily responsible for the heavy lifting.
"You come in representing the boomers — my God, we're 70 years old — the sages who have been around to bring in a historical perspective," Kurtis said. "That's what's fun that I'm looking forward to and, I also believe, just as we were brand new with 'It wasn't pretty, but it's real' in 1973, it may be a new dynamic."
Perhaps most significantly, Kurtis and Jacobson provide a tacit endorsement for Rob Johnson, 42, who has been the sole anchor of all three evening newscasts, and Kate Sullivan, 34, his newly imported 5 p.m. and 10 p.m. co-anchor.
"You can't go back, and this isn't about throwing spaghetti against the wall," said WBBM news chief Jeff Kiernan, who, like sportscaster Ryan Baker, grew up watching Kurtis and Jacobson. "Bill and Walter have an undeniable and meaningful relationship with viewers in Chicago. … Bill and Walter doing the 6, and Rob and Kate joined at the 5 and 10 is about the future of CBS-2. Rob and Kate bridged by Bill and Walter … will be a meaningful thing to viewers in Chicago."
Kurtis and Jacobson provide a link to more stable times. The Sept. 13 debut of Johnson and Sullivan, who is leaving the 5 a.m. news on New York's WCBS, for example, will mark the 11th change to Channel 2's 10 p.m. anchor lineup in 10 years.
"It had been difficult at times to go through a lot of change and a lot of wondering where we were going," said Steve Baskerville, a Channel 2 weathercaster since 1987 who said simply the familiarity of Kurtis and Jacobson was comforting. "It's invigorating for me. It can be tiring to go through a lot of change. But I feel excited about where we're going."
The new economic realities of 21st century media mean WBBM does not enjoy the remarkable bench strength it so successfully exploited in 1973 when then-station chief Bob Wussler and then-news boss Van Gordon Sauter hatched the plan to reinvent how to present the news. Behind the mantra/slogan "It's not pretty, but it's real," correspondents reported live on location, the newsroom became the set and out front were the oddly complementary co-anchors.
The first Kurtis-Jacobson era ended in 1982, when Kurtis left for CBS News in New York, where he co-anchored its morning news with Diane Sawyer and then Phyllis George. In returning to WBBM three years later, Kurtis replaced Don Craig on one Channel 2 newscast and Harry Porterfield on another.
Porterfield's demotion precipitated protests led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson to spotlight the dearth of minorities in broadcasting, encouraged Porterfield's departure for ascendant WLS-Ch. 7 and seemed to hasten WBBM's decline. Channel 7 has long been the city's top-rated TV news and Channel 2 has been trying to dig itself out ever since.
Kurtis can rattle off some of the reasons — or excuses — by rote. "You had a bad signal, then you had bad lead-ins," he said. "Even when I was there, we went through the scary announcer period when we systematically tried to get rid of any North Shore viewer and tried to replace them with Channel 7's blue-collar viewer. All of which were gigantic mistakes."
Jacobson would leave Channel 2 for WFLD-Ch. 32 for a 13-year run in 1993. Kurtis exited in 1996 to tend to his documentary production company and other ventures. But Porterfield, now in his 80s, returned to Channel 2 last year when WLS opted not to renew his contract, offering a hint of WBBM management's interest in reconnecting with its heritage.
Kurtis has appeared on Channel 2's 10 p.m. newscast occasionally since fall, when the station picked up syndicated late-night reruns of the old cable series, "Cold Case Files." WBBM also enlisted him for station promos that had the same wry tone as the AT&T ads for which he became well known. A whole generation might know him best as narrator of the film "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy."
Kurtis and Jacobson agreed to anchor a nostalgia-tinged 10 p.m. newscast for Channel 2 in November, and Jacobson parlayed the one-night stunt into a revival of his "Perspective" commentaries on Channel 2, a hallmark of his early days there as well as at WFLD. There has been talk of a reunion ever since — for what they represent as much as what they can do.
"There were times, remember, in the past when the standards of local journalism were going through very dramatic, negative changes," Jacobson said. "There was a wish to be different from the way things were five minutes before.
"That period brought local television news to a bottom," he said. "Now there seems to be more interest in going more in-depth and get into the neighborhoods and tell the stories that affect people. … And they're looking to two guys who've been through that. Maybe we can reconnect those people to television news."