Michael Gartner, the bow-tied newspaperman from Iowa, did what his bosses at NBC-TV and its parent, General Electric Co., hired him to do nearly five years ago: He slashed staff and services and stopped the red ink from flowing at NBC News.
But network news done “on the cheap” has its price. And both NBC News, once a sterling symbol of a network that grew up with broadcast news, and Gartner are paying it.
NBC’s credibility has been tarnished, perhaps irreparably, by a fatally compromised investigative report on General Motors pickup trucks. And now Gartner is falling on his management sword, resigning as president of NBC News to go back to an Iowa he never really left.
And network news at NBC? In a time when some people bluntly question whether any traditional TV network will even survive in the brave new world of telecommunications, no one knows what will happen next.
Networks have always acted as middlemen between programmers and viewers, deciding what will be on and when. They grew up and flourished as department stores, able to force viewers to accept goods on their own rigid schedules.
But in the coming TV revolution, consumers who have forsaken Sears for The Gap will be making their own TV choices more and more.
So who needs a network and who needs network news? Especially if the news has become a laughingstock that can’t be trusted?
Rumors abound that GE was shopping NBC, for $3.5 billion to $4 billion. Bill Cosby came to talk, as did Barry Diller, who built Fox TV into a fourth network. But no one has bitten-at that price. Broadcasting accounted for just $3 billion of GE’s $60 billion in revenues in 1991 but represented a proportionately larger corporate headache, so the rumors persist.
In the end, what burned along with the GMC truck so prominently featured on “Dateline NBC” last fall were the last lonely bastions of support, at the network and at GE, for Michael Gartner.
After 4 1/2 years at the helm of NBC’s news division, Gartner, 54, said Tuesday he will resign Aug. 1. The network said a search for his successor will begin immediately. Gartner said he expects to be “out of the office” much of the time between now and then; management of the news division has been turned over to the No. 2 man, executive vice president Don Browne.
Gartner’s tenure was marred by missteps and gaffes. They ranged from botched coverage of the 1989 San Francisco earthquake, to the humiliating dumping of Jane Pauley from her co-anchor perch at “Today,” to the naming of William Kennedy Smith’s alleged rape victim, to the phonied-up footage of a burning truck on “Dateline.”
News division morale was low-“a rudderless ship,” according to one network editor. And the more than 200 NBC affiliate stations never liked Gartner, finding him arrogant and insensitive to their problems.
But Gartner might have survived even the “Dateline” fiasco if his remaining backers-his boss, NBC President Robert Wright, and his boss, GE President Jack Welch-hadn’t folded.
Said a prominent TV news executive: “Michael had no constituency to survive the ordeal. He had no support from the affiliates. He basically was surviving because GE liked him.”
Gartner’s resignation statement is a study in face-saving. He-and Wright, in a separate statement-emphasized that Gartner had made it known late last year that he would leave NBC next summer.
“I think this all unraveled very quickly,” said Jeff Zucker, executive producer of both “Today” and the “Nightly News,” referring to the Page 1 article in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal that said Gartner was leaving. “But for the good of the division, it was the right thing for Michael to do.
“Michael made some mistakes, but he left us with a lot of good things. We’ve got to capitalize on that,” Zucker said.
Both Gartner and Wright emphasized those “good things” in their separate statements.
Gartner said he is “immensely proud” of what NBC has accomplished on his watch. He cited quadrupling the number of hours broadcast each week, launching new shows, establishing the News Channel for affiliates (sort of a video wire service) and its Spanish-language progeny, reviving the ratings of “Today” and the “Nightly News” and developing relationships with others, such as PBS and foreign broadcasters.
“These wounds are not permanent,” Zucker said. “We’ve had some setbacks, and we acknowledge that, but it’s not fatal.”
Ironically, on Monday “Dateline NBC” won a prestigious George Polk award for national television reporting for a segment on Wal-Mart Inc. buying clothes from sweatshops in India that employ children.
In the summer of 1988 Wright chose Gartner to head the news division precisely because he wasn’t a veteran of the TV wars. Wright and his bosses at GE didn’t want someone steeped in broadcast news traditions. They knew cuts had to be made and they wanted change.
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The news division was losing more than $100 million a year at the time. During Gartner’s years at the helm, he brought news at least to the break-even point.
What impressed Wright, according to “Three Blind Mice,” Ken Auletta’s 1991 critique of the TV networks, was Gartner’s frustration with “an elitist journalistic culture.” This aloof man from Iowa with impeccable newspaper credentials and no TV ties fit the ticket, they thought.
But Gartner never moved his family to New York, instead traveling back to Iowa on weekends. Geography aside, said a source at NBC’s Chicago station, WMAQ, “Michael just never got into the flow.
“The affiliates disliked him the minute he took over because he lost Connie Chung and Chris Wallace” (to CBS and ABC, respectively).
What’s needed at the top now is someone who “shows a sense of integrity and a sense of responsibility in running a network news division. That has not been forthcoming, and they’re paying the price; they’re reaping what they have sown,” said former NBC News President Lawrence Grossman, who was forced out when he balked at budget cuts and interference in the news division from GE.
“A news president will either go along with it or fight it and lose. You’ve got two examples: One that fought it and lost and one that just resigned,” he added.
The new head of news should be an “Aha!” choice with “impeccable integrity,” said Tim Russert, moderator of “Meet the Press,” NBC’s Washington-based Sunday talk show. “It’s important when he or she is announced that people in this business say, `Aha, that’s good.’ “
“The news division was demoralized, discredited, disgraced-all the `D’ words,” said Ron Alridge, publisher of Electronic Media, who called for Gartner’s resignation in the March 1 edition. “Right now, they absolutely have to have a charismatic, highly respected journalistic type who can not only manage a department, but also champion the cause of news.”
Alridge also spoke of the pressures on TV news. “Getting viewers is becoming much more important sometimes than informing viewers,” he said. “That’s a broader problem that you can’t really pin on Gartner.
“This ought to be a wakeup call for a lot of news people,” he added. “If they’re not very, very careful, a lot of other news organizations can have similar things happen. You lose credibility in the news business and you’re dead; you can’t make it. You have no purpose for being.”
Russert, mentioned as a possible Gartner replacement, said he asked Bob Wright “to take my name off the short list. I have the best job in TV. I was obviously flattered.”
Bob Horner, head of NBC’s affiliate News Channel in Charlotte, N.C., also was mentioned in some circles as a possible replacement. But he said, “They must be distant, out-of-touch circles. I don’t think that’s the case.”