Snap, Crackle, Pop At Daybreak

By James Kelly

Phyllis McGrady certainly does not act bellicose. As executive producer of ABC's Good Morning America, she seems relaxed, soft-spoken, charming. But there she is, sitting in her Manhattan office, comparing the race among the three network morning shows to a pitched battle worthy of the Iliad. "The competition is ferocious," McGrady says. "It's war games, the combat zone." Several blocks away, Steve Friedman, executive producer of NBC's Today show, seems like ideal fishing-trip company: funny, good-hearted, gregarious. But turn to the subject of Good Morning America and Friedman climbs the ramparts. "They want us to die," he says, voice rising. "I'm telling you, it's war, and we're out there to kill them."

Welcome to the bullet-scarred land of morning television, the breakfast firing range where the three networks snap, crackle and pop for rating points. The fray has always been fierce, but the brawl for the top spot is now more frenzied than ever. After gradually closing in on Good Morning America for more than a year, the Today show has beaten or tied its ABC competitor five weeks in the past three months, thus breaking GMA's 163-week hold on first place. Though Today still spends most of its time as a close second,* the taste of victory brings fresh confidence to the NBC corridors. "We think we will be No. 1," says Today Co-Host Jane Pauley. "We've got the momentum."

Over at CBS, however, no one is dancing in the hallways. The CBS Morning

News, the perennial also-ran, is glued in third place despite the addition of Phyllis George as co-anchor. The show has been hobbled by the poor chemistry between Bill Kurtis, a seasoned television reporter from Chicago who joined the show in 1982, and George, a former Miss America with no newsgathering experience. Try as he might to banter with George, Kurtis still acted a bit like a college senior who is flattered to help the head cheerleader with her homework but is flustered by her answers. After weeks of rumors, Kurtis left the show last week; though a contract has not been signed yet, he likely will return to CBS-owned WBBM-TV in Chicago. Veteran CBS Reporter Bob Schieffer will join George until a new co-host is named, probably in the early fall.

Though George seems more comfortable on the air than when she began in January (she no longer flubs lines with abandon, like referring to Andrew Lloyd Webber as the composer of Jesus Christ Superstore), she is still capable of the silly gaffe. CBS executives stand strongly by her, even after her infamous invitation to Gary Dotson and Cathleen Crowell Webb, the main characters in the recent Chicago rape-testimony recantation, to hug on the air. "We needed a high-powered, experienced TV personality to draw people away from two established, successful competitors," says Executive Producer Jon Katz. "Phyllis George will bring a lot of people into our tent. All she needs is time."

George's arrival was accompanied by an overhaul of the show, including a new set complete with couch, brassy theme music and twisting, gridlike graphics. Estimated price tag: $2 million. Despite the show's dismal ratings, Katz remains confident. He points out that the program expanded to two hours only three years ago; before that, it split its time slot with Captain Kangaroo. "Morning News suffers, more than anything else, from not being on the air long enough," says Katz.

Rather like an electronic USA Today, all three shows offer up not only hard news, interviews and weather but featurish pieces on everything from heart disease to tips for keeping children happy on car trips. What these programs do best is live exchanges with two or three people on different sides of an emotional issue. Good Morning America, for example, recently paired Holocaust Survivor Elie Wiesel and Conservative Columnist John Lofton; when Lofton criticized Wiesel for not speaking out against other atrocities, Wiesel's blunt rebuttal ("How dare you, really") made for affecting television.

Today's steady ratings' climb can be traced partly to the growing success of NBC's prime-time fare; according to a broadcasting maxim, some morning viewers watch whatever station they left the dial on the night before. The show has also profited from hitting the road. Pauley and Co-Host Bryant Gumbel broadcast the program live from Rome for a week in early April, then Gumbel traveled solo to Viet Nam to mark the tenth anniversary of the Communist takeover. In late May the Today stars and staff -- 47 people in all -- traveled 2,500 miles on a specially outfitted train through the American heartland, stopping off to beam the show live from Houston, New Orleans, Memphis, Indianapolis and Cincinnati. What might have been merely a promotional stunt turned into an enticing Baedeker of American urban life and the country's romance with the rails. The show did not simply dwell on the sunny side of the tracks; Gumbel and Pauley examined troubled race relations in Memphis and Cincinnati's antipornography laws.

As their teamwork on the road proved, Gumbel and Pauley go together like bagels and cream cheese. Gumbel, who hosted NBC's professional football coverage before replacing Tom Brokaw on Today in 1982, has rapidly grown into an incisive interviewer adept at cutting through mushy answers. During an interview with Louisiana's slick Governor Edwin Edwards last month, for example, Gumbel kept sweeping away the politician's charming patter to discuss the impact of Edwards' recent indictment on conspiracy charges. For her part, Pauley displays a more empathetic style, laced with a self-deprecating wit, that works best when she is discussing topics of high emotion. Together, "Gumpaul" (as the pair is called in-house) projects a casual, good- humored relationship that goes down well with corn flakes.

At GMA, Host David Hartman and his producers watch Today's resurgence and the evolving changes at Morning News with practiced calm. Though Hartman flew to New Delhi three weeks ago to interview Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, McGrady has no plans to copy Today's weeklong jaunts away from the studio. "Whenever you're in trouble, you travel," she says. "We still go out, but we don't need to do it in such a big way."

McGrady acknowledges that Gumbel and Pauley have improved as interviewers, but she feels the easygoing pace of Today is copied from GMA. "Some research person probably said to Today's producers that GMA is more relaxed and that people like that," says McGrady. Neither she nor Hartman plans any major tinkering with GMA's format. "We're not looking at Today's ratings and saying, 'Oh, good,' " Hartman admits. "But it doesn't worry me in the sense of 'Gracious, we have to hit the panic button. We've fallen apart.' We haven't."

Who can fault such confidence? Hartman joined the show at its birth in 1975 and, as Today's Friedman admits, "changed the face of morning television." Hartman's abundant curiosity and sense of wonderment still serve him well after all these years; his narration of a flight he took in a B-1 bomber last year vividly captured the sights, sounds and fears. Joan Lunden, who has shared a homey set with Hartman since 1980, has sharpened what once were rather dull interviewing skills. Yet the duo rarely engage in the spontaneous banter of Gumpaul.

Occasionally, Hartman's folksiness curdles into a gee-whizzy naivete, but the man who prides himself on posing the questions the viewer would ask is not given to self-doubt. Told of a comment by NBC's Friedman that "David Hartman is getting older and more tired," Hartman does not bat an eye. "Well, I am getting older," he says as he finishes his stretching exercises on the floor of his ABC office. "That's quite an observation." But is David Hartman weary? "I'm just as excited about this job as I ever was." So saying, Hartman is out the door, heading for Central Park and his regular five-mile run -- and not pausing to look over his shoulder for competitors.

FOOTNOTE: *The latest count gives ABC a 5 rating, NBC 4.5 and CBS 3.2. That translates into 4.2 million sets tuned to GMA, 3.8 million to Today and 2.7 million to Morning

With reporting by Lawrence Mondi/New York