All the News That Fits

Brandweek, Sept 4, 2000 by Verne Gay

Why have a TV network saddled with affiliates and compensation when you can have a worldwide Web network burdened by ...nothing. No comp. No limitations. Just access to billions of potential online viewers. Why not kill the network news?

"We don't believe this is a zero sum business," says Glover, "in which one medium suffers because of another. The arithmetic of the business suggests that many people have gravitated to the Web and away from television. A big, rich site like ABCNews.com effectively brings them back into the corporate fold," he says. "If we're [ABC] going to be cannibalized, isn't it better we cannibalize ourselves than allow someone else to do it?"

But, he adds, "We also believe there are generations of people who want their news when they want it and they're not going to wait around for the scheduled broadcast." A third and growing faction, he says, are people "who want it all." These are the people who want to interact with their television set, who want to build their own news stories, and collect their own video and audio streams.

"The best live experience for a video program from ABC News remains on television," says Gershon. "Radio didn't kill television and television didn't kill radio, and I don't think providing access to some of this content on the Internet is going to kill any of those."

Verne Gay is a contributing editor to Mediaweek and writes about the television industry for Newsday.

SAM I AM

In another life, perhaps, Sam Donaldson would have made a perfect preacher. That voice. That personality. The man is positively electric with conviction. Spend 10 minutes with him, on any subject, and be prepared to undergo conversion.

Sam the Preacher man's latest crusade is the Internet. "It's kind of a rebirth," he says of samdonaldson @abcnews.com. "I don't care if 5,000 [are watching] or five million. It's a show in which I'm the sole anchor. I'm the captain. It's a great feeling."

For people who know him, "rebirth" is an appropriate description. Donaldson was unhappy when Primetime Live was morphed into 20/20, and not particularly pleased with the quasi-tabloid direction of that news magazine. Meanwhile, This Week with Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts was slugged with a ratings drop-off earlier this year (due, in part, to time-period changes) from which it has only recently begun to recover.

And then, Sam hooked up with the Internet and ABC News.com. All in all, it's been a very good year as a result.

Of the weekday interview show, Donaldson likes to joke that there are 6.5 billion people out there, and--by God--someday he's going to reach all of them, although he's not sure when: "If you're laying the transcontinental railroad in the 1800s, and you're on schedule, all of the track hasn't been laid yet. So far, you're on the prairie, and haven't had to dip around the valleys and mountains yet." And since "I don't have a road map," he says, he's not exactly sure when he'll get to those billions, but he'll keep trying.

The people who watch the show each day, he explains, "are primarily younger people in high-tech [jobs] who have a computer, a modem and Real Player, and they know how to do it. They're techies, and I say that admiringly. How do I know? Because whenever we do a show that appeals to them [he cites interviews with Internet industry leaders] we get a surge in audience." When pop culture figures appear, however, there is an ebb. When he interviews political figures, however, you can hear the proverbial pin drop: virtually no one tunes in, or as Donaldson colorfully puts it, "No one gives a rats-you-know-what."