The Empty-Chair Approach

The Empty-Chair Approach

If the myriad imitators of television's Meet The Press were to be given a generic name, they might well be called Spivaks (after Lawrence, the host, of course). This year yet another species of the genus Spivak -- the Novak, it might be labeled -- was launched on 15 Metromedia TV and radio stations and eight public-TV channels. Titled The Evans-Novak Report, the program is run by a regular two-man press panel, Columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak. Unlike most of the other spin-offs from Meet The Press, it does offer at least one new wrinkle: during the last 2!/2 minutes of the half-hour interview, the guest is excused, and the two inquisitors tear apart what he has said--and not said.

The format calls for the subject to leave the set during the last commercial break. Then the camera pans past his empty chair, and the two interviewers sum up whatever news they may have coaxed from him and expose any equivocations. Robert Finch, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, was on his way out but still within earshot when Evans noted that on the subject of federal welfare standards, "we got a lot of gobbledygook."

Novak (the saturnine-looking one) observed that Democratic National Chairman Fred Harris was "trying to carry water on both shoulders" in discussing whether the old-line politicians or the hew black groups should represent the party in Georgia. After CORE Director Roy Innis had left, Evans curtly dismissed his proposals for separation of the races. "I think," he said, "that Mr. Innis' basic racial philosophy makes very little sense. I don't see how it could work." Secretary of Housing and Urban Development George Romney got off easily, as did Presidential Assistant Daniel P. Moynihan. "Bob," Evans said, "I think those fat-cat Republicans at the Union League Club would probably blanch if they watched Dr. Moynihan talking the way he did to us." Moynihan had proposed a $9 billion federal grant for family allowances.

The empty-chair approach offers an obvious advantage to the interviewers, who can demolish a guest for inconsistencies, evasions or even outright untruths without having to do it to his face. If it seems rather unfair, the fact is that TV's panel interviewers only occasionally offer that sort of candid criticism while the guest is still around to fight back.

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