Going

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

From the moment in 1963 when CBS became the first network to expand its 15- minute nightly newscast to half an hour, visionaries there and at rivals NBC and ABC began to talk of the logical next step: a full hour of news. A quarter-century later, they are still just talking. But upstart Cable News Network, the 24-hour information service that began in 1980 and reaches 52 million households, has taken that step. Last week CNN launched The World Today, a 60-minute newscast (airtime: 6 to 7 p.m. EST) that in much of the U.S. competes head to head with the shows anchored by Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings.

Stacked up against those three white middle-aged men was an anchor team that made a striking symbolic statement. Washington-based Bernard Shaw, CNN's leading political correspondent, is black; Catherine Crier, based at the network's Atlanta headquarters, is a woman. Inadvertently, the choice of Crier, brought in from outside in preference to 150 in-house anchors and reporters, also made a depressing statement about the abiding importance of looks and packaging in TV news. A former college beauty-contest finalist and later an elected Texas judge, Crier, 34, has no journalism experience.

While Crier is articulate, she gave the opening installments more than her share of bumpy moments, including one glaring error. Reading a story about alleged CIA action against foreign governments, she indicated that socialist Salvador Allende Gossens had ruled Chile "from 1963 to 1973." As any news junkie would be likely to remember, Allende came to power in 1970, amid criticism from President Richard Nixon. Co-anchor Shaw so far sounds muted in his enthusiasm. Says he: "What she's been doing has been very adequate."

Other aspects of the show need fine tuning. Heavy reliance on live coverage led to an excess of pleasantries and some outright glitches. On Wednesday a San Francisco earthquake survivor was so upset by watching footage of the disaster that she bolted from the studio before her scheduled appearance. On Thursday a promised survivor interview was finally bumped for lack of time. CNN uses the hour to do a few stories fully rather than pepper the viewer with here-and-gone 30-second items, but last week's feature pieces often seemed simply long, not deep. Moreover, the hour seemed deliberately broken into two repetitive half-hour shows, covering much the same topics in slightly different fashion.

Executives at the three established networks noted that the opening show achieved a mere .7 rating, meaning that just seven cable households per thousand tuned in, one twenty-fourth of the audience typically commanded by each of the Big Three newscasts. Said a top NBC news official: "I'm more concerned about erosion of our audience from nonnews sources ((entertainment shows, VCRs and so on)) than competing news sources. I don't think this is going to make any difference to us." Of course, that's what the Big Three used to say, with misguided optimism, about CNN as a whole.

With reporting by Naushad S. Mehta/New York