The Evening News (6 page)
Authors: Arthur Hailey
Knowing there wasn't time to view the piece himself, and trusting
Kazazis, Insen ordered, "We'll go with it after this commercial. Stand
by
.”
With less than a minute to go, the tape operator, perspiring in his
air-conditioned work space, was continuing to edit, hurriedly combining
pictures, commentary and natural sound.
Insert's command was repeated to the anchorman and a writer seated near
him. A lead-in was already prepared and the writer passed the single
sheet to Crawford Sloane who skimmed it, quickly changed a word or two
,
and nodded thanks. A moment later on the anchor's Teleprompter, what were
to have been the next segment's opening words switched over to the DFW
story. In the broadcast studio as the commercial break neared its
conclusion, the stage manager called, "Ten seconds
. five . . . four . . . two . .
.”
At a hand signal Sloane began, his expression grave
.”
Earlier in this
broadcast we reported a midair collision near Dallas between a Muskegon
Airlines Airbus and a private plane. The private plane crashed There are
no survivors. The Airbus, on fire, crash-landed at Dallas-Fort Worth
Airport a few minutes ago and there are heavy casualties. On the scene
is CBA News correspondent Harry Partridge who has just filed this report
.”
Only seconds before had the frantic editing in the One-inchtape Room been
completed. Now, on monitors throughout the building and on millions of
TV sets in the Eastern and Midwestern United States and across the
Canadian border, a dramatic picture of an approaching, burning Airbus
filled the
screen and Partridge's voice began, "Pilots in a long-ago war called it comin' in on a wing and a prayer . .
.”
The exclusive report and pictures had, as the final item, made the
first-feed National Evening News.
There would be a second feed of the National Evening News immediately after
the first. There always was and it would be broadcast-in the East by
affiliate stations who did not take the first feed, widely in the Midwest
,
and most Western stations would record the second feed for broadcast later
.
The Partridge report from DFW would, of course, lead the second feed and
while competing networks might, by now, have after-the-fact pictures for
their second feeds, CBA's while-ithappened pictures remained a world
exclusive and would be repeated many times in the days to follow
.
There were two minutes between the end of the first feed and the beginning
of the second and Crawford Sloane used them to telephone Chuck Insen
.”
Listen
,”
Sloane said, "I think we ought to put the Saudi piece back in
.”
Insen said sarcastically, "I know you have a lot of pull. Can you arrange
an extra five minutes' air time
?
”
"Don't play games. That piece is important
.”
"It's also dull as oil. I say no
.”
"Does it matter that I say yes
?
”
"Sure it matters. Which is why we'll talk about it tomorrow. Meanwhile, I'm
sitting here with certain responsibilities
.”
"Which include-or ought to-sound judgments about foreign news
.”
"We each have our jobs
,”
Insen said, "and the clock is creeping up on
yours. Oh, by the way, you handled the Dallas thing-at both ends-nicely
.”
Without answering, Sloane hung up the telephone at the broadcast desk. As
an afterthought he told the writer beside him, "Ask someone to get Harry
Partridge on the phone at Dallas. I'll talk with him during the next break
.
I want to congratulate him and the others
.”
The stage manager called out, "Fifteen seconds
!
”
Yes, Sloane decided, there would be a discussion between himself and
Insen tomorrow and it would be a showdown. Perhaps Insen had outlived his
usefulness and it was time for him to go.
Chuck Insen was tight-lipped and unsmiling when, after the end of the
second feed and before going home, he returned to his office to gather
up a dozen magazines for later reading
.
Reading, reading, reading, to keep informed on a multitude of fronts, was
a news executive producer's burden. Wherever he was and no matter what
the hour, Insen felt obliged to reach for a newspaper, a magazine, a
newsletter, a nonfiction booksometimes obscure publications in all
categories-the way others might reach for a cup of coffee, a
handkerchief, a cigarette. Often he awoke in the night and read, or
listened to overseas news on short-wave broadcasts. At home, through his
personal computer, he had access to the major news wire services and each
morning, at 5 A.M., reviewed them all. Driving in to work, he listened
to radio news-mainly to CBS whose radio network news he, like many
professionals, acknowledged as the finest
.
It was, as Insen saw it, this widest possible view of the ingredients of
news, and of subjects which interested ordinary people that made his own
news judgments superior to those of Crawford Sloane, who thought too
often in elitist terms
.
Insen had a philosophy about those millions out there who watched the
National Evening News. What most viewers wanted, he believed, was the
answers to three basic questions: Is the world safe? Are my home and
family safe? Did anything happen today that was interesting? Above all
else, Insen tried to ensure that the news each evening supplied those
answers
.
He was sick and tired, Insen thought angrily, of the anchorman's
I-know-best, holier-than-thou attitude about news selection, which was
why tomorrow the two of them would have a slam-bang confrontation during
which Insen would say exactly what he was thinking now, and to hell with
consequences
.
What were those consequences likely to be? Well, in the past, in any kind
of contest between a network news
anchorman and his executive producer, the anchor had invariably won, with the producer having to look for work elsewhere. But a lot of things were changing in network news. There was a different climate nowadays, and there could always be a first, with an anchor departing and a producer staying on
.
With just that possibility in mind, a few days ago Insen had had an
exploratory, strictly confidential phone talk with Harry Partridge. Would
Partridge, the executive producer wanted to know, be interested in coming
in from the cold, settling down in New York, and becoming anchor of the
National Evening News? When he chose to, Harry could radiate authority and
would fit the part-as he had demonstrated several times by filling in while
Sloane was on vacation
.
Partridge's response had been a mixture of surprise and uncertainty, but at
least he hadn't said no. Crawf Sloane, of course, knew nothing of that
conversation
.
Either way, concerning himself and Sloane, Insen was convinced they
couldn't go on feuding without some kind of a resolution soon.
It was 7:40 P.M. when Crawford Sloane, driving a Buick Somerset, left the garage at CBA News headquarters. As usual, he was using a CBA car; one was always available as part of his employment contract and he could have a driver if he wanted, though most of the time he didn't. A few minutes later, as he turned onto Fifty-ninth Street from Third Avenue, heading east toward the FDR Drive, he continued thinking about the broadcast just concluded
.
At first his thoughts had gone in the direction of Insen, then he decided
to put the executive producer out of his mind until tomorrow. Sloane had
not the slightest doubt of his ability to cope with Insen and send him on
his way-perhaps to a net
work vice presidency which, despite the high-sounding title, would be a demotion after the National Evening News. It did not occur to Sloane for a moment that the reverse of that process could possibly happen. Had it been suggested fto him, he would undoubtedly have laughed
.
Instead, he turned his thoughts to Harry Partridge
.
For Partridge, Sloane recognized, the hasty but excellent reporting job
from Dallas had been one more solid performance in an outstanding
professional career. Through DFW's airport paging system Sloane had been
successful in reaching Partridge by phone and had congratulated him
,
asking him to pass on the same message to Rita, Minh and O'Hara. From an
anchorman that kind of thing was expected-a matter of noblesse obligeeven
though, where Partridge was concerned, Sloane did it without any great
enthusiasm. That underlying feeling was why, on Sloane's part, the
conversation had a touch of awkwardness, as conversations with Partridge
often did. Partridge had seemed at ease, though he sounded tired
.
Within the moving car, in a moment of silent, private honesty, Sloane
asked himself- How do I feel about Harry Partridge? The answer, with
equal honesty, came back: He makes me feel insecure
.
Both question and answer had their roots in recent history.
The two of them had known each other for more than twenty years, the same
length of time they had been with CBA News, having joined the network
almost simultaneously. From the beginning they were successful
professionally, yet opposites in personality
.
Sloane was precise, fastidious, impeccable in dress and speech; he
enjoyed having authority and wore it naturally. Juniors were apt to
address him as "sir
”
and let him go through doorways first. He could be
cool, slightly distant with people he did not know well, though in any
human contact there was almost nothing his sharp mind missed, either
spoken or inferred
.
Partridge, in contrast, was casual in behavior, his appearance rumpled;
he favored old tweed jackets and seldom wore a
suit. He had an easygoing manner which made people he met feel comfortable, his equal, and sometimes he gave the impression of not caring much about anything, though that was a contrived deception. Partridge had learned early as a journalist that he could discover more by not seeming to have authority and by concealing his keen, exceptional intelligence
.
They had differences in background too
.
Crawford Sloane, from a middle-class Cleveland family, had done his early
television training in that city. Harry Partridge served his main TV news
apprenticeship in Toronto with the CDC-Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation-and before that had worked as an
announcer-newscaster-weatherman for small radio and TV stations in Western
Canada. He had been born in Alberta, not far from Calgary, in a hamlet
called De Winton where his father was a farmer
.
Sloane had a degree from Columbia University. Partridge hadn't even
finished high school, but in the working world of news his de facto
education expanded rapidly
.
For a long time at CBA their careers were parallel; as a result they came
to be looked on as competitors. Sloane himself considered Partridge a
competitor, even a threat to his own progress. He was not sure, though, if
Partridge ever felt the same way
.
The competition between the two had seemed strongest when both were
reporting the war in Vietnam. They were sent there by the network in late
1967, supposedly to work as a team, and in a sense they did. Sloane
,
though, viewed the war as a golden opportunity to advance his own career;
even then he had the anchor desk of the National Evening News clearly in
his sights
.
One essential in his advancement, Sloane knew, was to appear on the evening
news as often as possible. Therefore, soon after arriving in Saigon he
decided it was important not to stray too far from "Pentagon
East"-headquarters of the United States Military Assistance Command for
Vietnam (MACV) at Tan Son Nhut air base, five miles outside Saigon-and
,
when he did travel, not to be away too long
.
He remembered, even after all these years, a conversation
between himself and Partridge, who had remarked, "Crawf, you'll never get to understand this war by attending the Saigon Follies or hanging around the Caravelle
.”