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Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings: They were on a first-name basis with the country for a generation, leading viewers through moments of triumph and tragedy. But now that a new generation has succeeded them, the once-glittering job of network anchor seems unmistakably tarnished. In an age of instantaneous Internet news, cable echo chambers and iPod downloads, who really needs the evening news? And, by extension, who needs Katie Couric, Brian Williams, and Charlie Gibson?
But the anchors still have a megaphone capable of cutting through the media static. Their coverage of Iraq helped turn the country against that bloody war, and they are now playing a leading role in chronicling the collapse of George Bush's presidency and the 2008 race to succeed him. Yet, even as the anchors fight for ratings supremacy, the mega-corporations they work for have handed them a bigger challenge: saving an American institution.
In this freewheeling, intimate account of life atop the media pyramid, award-winning bestselling author Howard Kurtz takes us inside the newsrooms and executive suites of CBS, NBC, and ABC, capturing the deadline judgments, image-making, jealousies, and gossip of this high-pressure business. Whether it is Couric trying to regain her morning magic while coping with tabloid stories about her boyfriends, Williams reporting from New Orleans and Baghdad while worrying about his ailing father, or Gibson weighing whether to follow his wife into retirement while grappling with having to report the explicit details of sex scandals, Kurtz brings to life the daily battles that define their lives.
The narrative reflects an extraordinary degree of access to such corporate chieftains as Jeff Zucker and Les Moonves, star correspondents, and the anchors themselves. Their goal: create an on-screen persona that people will tune in to and trust. Yet they are faced with a graying, shrinking audience as younger viewers flock to Jon Stewart, whose influence on the real newscasts is palpable. Here is the untold story of what these journalistic celebrities think of their bosses, cable competitors, bloggers, and each other.
Publisher : Free Press; First Edition (October 9, 2007)
Language : English
Hardcover : 480 pages
ISBN-10 : 0743299825
ISBN-13 : 978-0743299824
Item Weight : 1.7 pounds
Dimensions : 6.13 x 1.3 x 9.25 inches
Reviewer: Nathan A. Gordon
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Howie's Backstage Look at the News Begins Now
Review: If you are interested in the competitive frenzy that goes on between the various network news outlets each weekday, then you will understand why I have given Mr. Kurtz's book five stars.For example, while I perhaps should have known (given that each network broadcasts' first feed is live), it came as a surprise, frankly, that one broadcast might actually change its "script" and scheduled coverage--while on the air--to cover a story that one of the other shows decided to highlight. Each newscasts monitors each and every word and picture mentioned and shown on the other broadcasts.Kurtz is especially descriptive in profiling each of the three broadcast networks' evening news anchors--Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric. Brian is described as someone who wanted to be an anchor since he was in high school, Charlie as someone who didn't know that he wanted it until he thought it might go by default to Diane Sawyer and Katie, well Katie didn't know she wanted it until Dan Rather crashed and burned and started to get bored with "Today." No detail is too small here. While Brian seems to have substantial respect for Charlie, he is painted as someone who sees Katie as an interloper. (P.S. to Brian: You'll probably prefer competing against her than Anderson Cooper or Scott Pelley).Parts of this book give the impression that the three broadcast networks are re-living the modern equivalent of the "Front Page" newspaper era. But sadly, that's the rub: The three evening newscasts are not modern equivalents of anything because as Kurtz points out, technology seems to be on the verge of making these shows relics. The average viewer is nearing 60 and that is the same problem that today's leading newspapers have. So the fight goes on and Howie Kurtz does an admirable job telling us how we got here and where we may go.
Reviewer: PkM
Rating: 2.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Moderately interesting tattle - not very well-written
Review: Some interesting background on the current top TV news anchors and the journeys to their jobs - it is curiously a limited and skewed perspective that focuses almost solely on the Big 3 anchors and so provides limited context and analysis of the news business overall.Moreever it is a really badly-written book with jumbled characters and no sense of chronology/ continuity - I was surprised given that I have liked Kurtz' columns in the Post, but maybe he is at home only in a shorter format.Worth the read only if you really need to know that both Brian Williams and Bush use the f-word around Howard Kurtz, and other such behind-the-scenes details...
Reviewer: T. Tucker
Rating: 1.0 out of 5 stars
Title: simplistic, boring, and written from an odd perspective
Review: I often enjoy Kurt'z Media Notes column in the Washington Post, which is what led me to buy this book. I was very disappointed for a variety of reasons. One is that it lacks any kind of narrative drive. Kurtz seems to have studied at the Bob Woodward schools of sleep-inducing writing. (I haven't read Kurtz's other books, so I don't know if his other books are like this.)The other problem is more difficult to describe. In a nutshell, Kurtz assigns more importance to decisions made at the networks than to the actual events on the ground. It's a strange point of view and it leads Kurtz to shoehorn an extremely complex situation into a simplistic good news/bad news dichotomy.All in all, I thought the book was dreadful, surprisingly so.
Reviewer: ink & penner
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A Rather Boring Reality
Review: It's a little docu; it's a little bit gossip; it's a little bit drama; it's a lot tabloid.If you're looking for a hard-hitting look at what's going on in network TV news, forget this one. The sub-title is: "The Last Great Television News War," but evidently there's not much between-the-network warring going on. Kurtz details lots of battling, but it's usually softball and polite...and mostly between anchors and the behind-the-scenes players of each of the news shows...NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News, and ABC World News.Kurtz tells us how Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson, Katie Couric all came to occupy their respective anchor-chairs...with schmoozing top brass an apparent #1 requirement for the positions. We learn Williams long-time wanted the spot; Gibson would be happy without it...but Katie is Kurtz' anointed one. He pretty much ignores the adventures of now top-ranked Charles Gibson. He can't stop talking about Brian Williams. He's the ever-present cheerleader for poor underdog Katie. It all gets pretty dull pretty fast.--You'd think we'd learn about network news as a cut-throat, slimy, back-stabbing endeavor. Maybe it is, but we don't learn that here. By the book's cover, you get the feeling that un-revealable secrets of the business will be revealed. -But it's not a rugged, no-holds barred expose of Network vs. Network strategies. Instead, it comes loaded up with soft touch, wimpy anecdotes, emotion and reminiscences...surely designed to help satisfy pop culture's insatiable appetite for the "inside scoop" on our TV stars, news anchors included. To spice-up his story?...to help to make the high-rent news-stars seem more human?... Kurtz includes concrete evidence that our anchors pepper their private conversation with the "street language" of a common rap song. Howard, did you actually take notes on newscaster usage of f-words?!Kurtz offers us some solutions for the great viewer-slump net news is in. Generally, he says, since the nightly news programs look and feel flat, they need to be fired up, beefed up, souped up. This would help, he thinks, to make them more attractive to younger, "hipper" audiences. He claims the news-shows should have more of an interactive, "Internet feel." -A more one-on-one, "personal" approach. Really? Come on, Howard... wasn't this the stated direction for the [ramped-down, Couric first] show Katie took on when she was hired by CBS? Hmmmmm. Youth rejects Couric, too...as her numbers continue to tank.So much for the Kurtz "solutions" in a lightweight, long-winded book that never actually frames "the problem" in a concise and serious way. -But what might we expect from a NYC entertainment columnist? The book's less like network-on-network wars...and more like a series of unconnected, fuzzy scenes out of Access Hollywood scripts. The facts are plenty, the details abundant (although often irrelevant -Couric wants What to be etched onto her tombstone?!). -All in all, it's a reality yawn.
Reviewer: Luis GB
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Very easy to read
Review: I found out very provocative and fun. It all depends on your expectations. Good reading during the holidays, if you want to decompress from all the stress associated with shopping, flying, bad weather, etc.
Reviewer: J. M. Leatherwood Jr.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Fasinating - very hard to put down
Review: I found this book very interesting and very hard to put down. I finished it in 3-4 days after picking it up at the library.I love "insider/backstory" books and this is one of the best I've read. I gained a lot of respect for the work necessary to create a nightly national newscast, and all the conflicting pressures that go in to shaping it.Kurtz keeps my interest from page one.