Britain's Barbara

When Barbara Walters joins ABC'S Evening News next fall, she will be the highest-paid woman ever to anchor a national news program--but not the first in the world. For more than a year, Angela Rippon, 31, has been the Barbara Walters of the British Broadcasting Corp.'s evening newscasts. There is one major difference between the two women: while Walters will get $1 million a year for her efforts, Rippon makes the standard BBC reporter's salary of less than $14,000, not counting a $127 annual clothing allowance.

Like her American counterpart, Rippon was brought in to help raise the ratings of her network's prime-time news. The government-chartered BBC does not accept advertising, but does depend on ratings to justify the ever-rising license fees (currently $32.75 a year for a color set) that pay most of BBC'S bills. The network claims that 1.5 million more Britons watch its evening news than view that of its rival, the commercial Independent Television Authority. But audience measurement is an unrefined science in Britain, and the ITV'S news had long been considered by critics to be livelier and more imaginative than the starchy BBC, known in the trade as "Aunty." In 1972 Aunty tried to go trendy by installing a Huntley-Brinkley-type team of two anchor men, modernizing its set and spicing up its copy with breezy backstairs language. But when the old BBC starch was gone, what was left proved limp and ITV'S inroads continued.

Early this year BBC named Andrew Todd, a determined Scots purist, its television news editor, and he set out to stiffen the network's upper lip again. Todd scrapped the two-man format and banned cliches. He spotted Rippon reading bulletins on the network's late-night newscast and promoted her to prime time. Now she reigns as one of BBC's four newscasters, who appear alone in regular rotation.

A journalist since she was 17, Rippon joined the network as a reporter in 1973 and worked in Belfast, Rome and London. Along the way she developed the icy stare and prim demeanor of a schoolmarm, plus the flawless, classless diction of--well, a BBC announcer. "All weightiness and reliability," says a satisfied Todd of his Angela and her new colleagues. Nor is he the only one impressed with Rippon: she recently received the Radio Industries Club's Newscaster of the Year award.

Rippon works a three-day shift of twelve-hour days. She does not write her own copy, though she suggests changes to improve style and delivery. "The hardest part of the job is the mental discipline," she says. "You mustn't look as if you're concentrating, but the biggest pitfall is to lose concentration."

At the end of her work week, she jumps into her MGB and roars off to Devon, 225 miles away, where she and her husband, a local auto-parts dealer, have a cottage. Rippon, who has no children, spends her up-country time cooking, riding and bird watching. It is a long commute but, says Rippon, "I've worked all my life in a male-dominated society, and I couldn't pass up an opportunity like this." Nor does word about the salaries they are paying in the former colonies disturb her. Says she: "I'm delighted for Barbara Walters. But things are on a different scale here. We're not in the personality industry. We are journalists, not performers."

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