Audition (49 page)

My indecision had to end. And it did, on Wednesday afternoon, April 21, in Radio City Music Hall, where I’d taken seven-year-old Jackie to see the musical classic
That’s Entertainment!
I was totally worn out but I felt that in the past few weeks I hadn’t been spending enough time with her. Why I thought this nostalgic review of Hollywood’s past musicals would be her cup of tea I don’t know, but it was a chance for us to hold hands and be together with no phones ringing and nobody pushing for my attention.

Sitting in the darkened theater, still torturing myself, I remembered Richard Nixon saying to me at some point: “Don’t make any decisions when you’re exhausted.” He was right, I knew, and I was indeed exhausted. But I just couldn’t go on this way. And somewhere in the midst of watching Fred Astaire (whom I’d interviewed) and Ginger Rogers (whom I’d also interviewed) whirl so elegantly and gracefully on the screen, I decided to go to ABC. Their evening news had nowhere to go but up. I didn’t want to spend the next two years at NBC getting up at 4:30 a.m. I wanted time to be with my daughter. The expansion of the news to an hour would play to my strength. How could I go wrong?

I held my nose and jumped.

I called Lee at 9:00 the next morning, after I did my two hours on
Today
, to tell him my decision. Lee said he would call Herb Schlosser and Al Rush. Then I had to rush off to tape a whole bunch of shows for
Not for Women Only
and to tape a few commercials that were to run on
Today
.

That is when it got ugly.

When I returned to my office I planned to call Herb Schlosser to tell him personally I was leaving NBC. But instead the phones were ringing off the hook, with devastating news. A series of “anonymous” spokesmen from NBC had called every newspaper and newsmagazine and the wire services to announce that they had withdrawn their counteroffer, knowing full well that I had been the one to end the negotiations! I guess it was to save face before the public announcement that I was going to ABC, but nonetheless, it was very harmful to me then—and long term.

Citing the “carnival atmosphere” surrounding the negotiations, NBC put out a series of lies. They claimed that I had demanded a private limousine and a full-time hairdresser and makeup person. How absurd! NBC had been providing these services to me, and to many others, for years. But it sounded good and greedy. “These were things that one would associate with a movie queen, not a journalist, and we had second thoughts,” one of the spokesmen told the
New York Times
.

I was furious and called Dick Wald. He claimed he knew nothing about the release, which was also a lie. I found out later he had been at the meeting that morning with Julian Goodman, Herb Schlosser, Al Rush, and the publicity people who would be the actual hatchet men. It was Al Rush, the chief negotiator, who entered the meeting saying: “I think the boat has sailed. I think ABC’s got her.”

Well, it’s a long way from “I think” in the morning to “movie queen” by the afternoon. But they had decided then and there, in that meeting, to publicly withdraw their offer. And guess what? They felt it was
my
fault! Not only were they angry that I was leaving, but who did I think I was anyway, that I hadn’t called them myself to tell them my decision? No one considered that I was busy doing my job, cohosting the
Today
show and taping back-to-back complete programs of
Not for Women Only
, and the commercials that were so profitable to the network.

Herb Schlosser later claimed they had tried several times to reach me by phone but I was doing the commercials and couldn’t be reached. Ridiculous. Is it conceivable that the chairman and CEO of NBC, the president of NBC, the president of NBC News, and the vice president of program talent and acquisitions could not at least have gotten a message to me? We were all in the same building, for goodness’ sake. Which brings me back to Dick Wald, who stood in my office that afternoon and claimed he had no knowledge of the contract withdrawal and said that he’d take care of it right away.

According to my assistant, Mary Hornickel, Dick left my office about ten minutes before six. Shortly afterward, John Chancellor came on the evening news and announced, “NBC valued Barbara’s service highly, but the negotiations for a renewal of her contract involved a million dollars and other privileges, and this afternoon NBC pulled out of the negotiations, leaving her a clear path to ABC. We wish her luck in her new job.” To his credit, John later told me that he was very upset when he found out it wasn’t true and that
I
had been the one to end the negotiations. But the damage had been done.

Our mistake, Lee Stevens’s and mine, was not to send out our own release with the news that I was going to ABC. Somehow we thought NBC would be gracious enough to work out a joint release or at least discuss what should be said. We couldn’t have been more wrong.

When I left the studio at the end of the day, the flashbulbs practically blinded me. The headlines the next day were horrendous. One paper compared me to a Radio City Rockette, a chorus girl reading the news and wanting to be taken seriously.

Then came the drumbeat of the money. The press was relentless on the “million-dollar baby,” or, more, the “five-million-dollar baby.” Even the foreign press picked up the money story: German newspapers, French, Japanese, Indian, on and on. “Kobieta za 5 mlm dolarow” ran the headline in a Polish newspaper. I was becoming famous practically all over the world. Small consolation then, although it would be helpful years later when I wanted to interview world leaders.

Then there were my television colleagues. Everyone from Walter Cronkite to the head of CBS News to sportscasters was clucking away about the million-dollar death of journalism. “Is Barbara a journalist or is she Cher?” asked Richard Salant, the president of CBS News. Cronkite echoed his boss’s views, claiming he had experienced “the sickening sensation that we were all going under.” But you know what? Almost every television journalist, including Harry Reasoner, walked into his boss’s office, demanded a raise—and got it. Well, you’re welcome.

A few brave voices, especially from women, were raised in my defense. “There is, in my paranoid little mind, a vague suspicion that the controversy wouldn’t have raged as far and deep if Ms. Walters had been Mr. Walters,” wrote columnist Ellen Goodman in the
Washington Post
. She was echoed by Marianne Means, a syndicated columnist for Hearst newspapers, who wrote: “The controversy over Barbara Walters’ whopping $5 million contract to coanchor the ABC Nightly News smells to high heaven of sour grapes…. The real shocker is not that a coanchor person has reached the $1 million yearly figure, but that a woman has.”

A few men also wrote in my support. One of them was Bill Barrett, the television columnist for the
Cleveland Press
. “Barbara Walters deserves the opportunity,” he wrote. “She has come a long, long way—a lot farther than any man would have had to go to get to the big network news chair.” I was even the subject of an editorial in the
Charleston Evening Post
. “Barbara Walters is both a gifted journalist and an accomplished showman (we refuse to say showperson)…. We rejoice, with the merest trace of envy, at the elevation of a reporter to the upper bracket of stardom.”

I was grateful for the voices raised in my defense, but I was also uncomfortable being a centerpiece in the gender wars and in the entertainment vs. news wars, the “purist” wars that saw money as the death of journalism. Journalists, I felt, are supposed to report the news, not
be
the news.

I somehow continued to do the
Today
show. My contract with NBC had another four and a half months to run—but I was miserable. It was very tense on the set and in the halls, sort of like staying on in the same apartment with an ex-husband.

The reports coming in about Harry Reasoner didn’t help. One article quoted a woman at ABC as saying he was a “male chauvinist pig.” What upset me the most came from Lou Weiss. He had seen Harry in a restaurant shortly after the ABC announcement, and Harry was complaining loudly, for all to hear, how he didn’t want me. Lou was so taken aback by Harry’s public outburst that he told me that maybe we had made a mistake. It was a little late for that observation.

I wasn’t long at NBC. The network took me off the air in June. The nation’s Bicentennial celebrations were coming up, and they didn’t want me broadcasting that major event. But they also didn’t let me out of my contract. They would not let me go to ABC, or even to set foot in the ABC newsroom, until my contract expired in September. If I had, they could have sued me for breach of contract, and in their anger they just might have.

So there was no two-hour farewell program of “Barbara’s Greatest Hits” over the last thirteen years on
Today
or excerpts from the many interviews I had done. It was good-bye and good riddance. On my last day I was permitted to say a few closing words to the viewers who, by devotedly watching, had so changed my life. This is what I said.

“The
Today
show is twenty-four years old. During the first twelve years, there were thirty-three different women on the program; for the past thirteen years, there has been only one. In the early years of the program, I was sort of a glorified tea pourer, but times have changed. Women in television no longer have to begin as I did, and I’m happy for whatever small contribution I’ve made toward this change.”

And that was that. There was a small party for me with the
Today
cast and crew in Studio 3K at 9:00 a.m. Not the best time for a party. The Alpo people had at least given me a lunch the day before and presented me with a magnum of champagne in a red ice bucket shaped like a fire hydrant. The dogs were seemingly more grateful for the dog food commercials I’d done for them than the humans were for the work I’d done at NBC.

I didn’t get a farewell watch at the going-away party, but that was fine. More valuable to me by far was the silver box I got from the
Today
producers with an inscription. “To Barbara. Love.
Today
.” Even more gratifying was a gold bracelet with a charm from the program’s stagehands and crew members with my name on it and the words “We love you.” And it was over. Just like that.

That night I went to Herb Schlosser’s fiftieth-birthday party. I’d been invited before the nasty endgame at NBC. All my old friends at NBC were going to be there, including the major players in the failed contract negotiations, Dick Wald and Al Rush. I wanted to see how they would react when I walked in. It was not pleasant.

The room went completely silent when I arrived. Everyone froze, like a still frame in a movie. The tableau resonated with the unspoken, “What is
she
doing here?” Herb rallied through the shock. He alone was a gentleman. “How nice to see you, Barbara,” he said, coming up to greet me. I responded, “Well, I wouldn’t have missed your birthday, Herb.” I smiled, made my manners, and left after ten painful minutes.

As I write this, once again I can’t help but contrast my experience with what happened to Katie Couric when she left NBC. There was little uproar over the salary CBS was giving her, a reported $15 million a year. NBC gave her the most glorious send-off—a three-hour retrospective preceded by two weeks of tributes, messages from celebrities and high-profile politicians, special music written for her, and past clips of her work from her years on
Today
. There was a gala going-away party and an equally warm welcome awaiting her at CBS. It is true that even in 2006, there were articles and editorials about whether Katie would succeed, but nothing scathing or mean when she left NBC; no lies and nothing deliberately hurtful.

We did the same kind of send-off for Meredith Vieira when she chose to leave my daytime program on ABC,
The View
, to take Katie’s place on
Today
. We gave Meredith good-bye tributes, a going-away party for her whole family, and, most of all, our loving best wishes. We were sorry she was leaving but happy about the new chapter in her life.

Perhaps my experience was the price of being first, and in a very different time. Back in 1976 you could freely attack a woman for wanting to attempt to do a so-called man’s job, especially in the holier-than-thou men-only news departments. Many people still believed that women were supposed to know their place—and stay in it. There were few women in front of the camera and fewer still in any kind of executive position. Today, that same attitude would not only be politically incorrect, but the backlash would be enormous.

After I left the
Today
show, NBC made the decision not to renew Jim Hartz’s contract. Instead, they quickly announced that the new cohosts of
Today
were to be newsman Tom Brokaw and Jane Pauley, a perky young woman from NBC’s Chicago affiliate. I sent Jane a congratulatory telegram: “You are beginning a wonderful new life…. Get a good alarm clock and enjoy.” One thing she wouldn’t need from me was any advice on how to handle the dogs in the Alpo commercials because, in another change, the “talent” on the
Today
show was no longer going to be required to do commercials.

One more thing about my departure from NBC, the most important of all. I did not know back then what I learned when I began to research that painful period for this book. In 2006 I had lunch with Lou Weiss, he of the famous matchbook tennis game in 1976 and now the chairman emeritus of William Morris, and with my former NBC colleagues Dick Wald and Herb Schlosser. (Both were fired within two years of my departure. I have no idea whether it had anything to do with me. Schlosser later went into investment banking; Wald eventually came to ABC News and we became friends again.) Each gave me his view, as best he remembered, of the turmoil surrounding my exit from NBC.

They didn’t agree on everything, but they did agree on this. If I had stayed at NBC, I never would have had the same opportunities I have had at ABC. NBC’s ratings were in a slump. ABC’s star was rising fast. And with Dick and Herb gone, there would have been no one who would have been looking out for me or invested in my future.