Audition

by Barbara Walters

  Other options were even more seductive. You could arrive at the office as late as 3:00 p.m. if you wanted to, and work with the managing editor on the news for that night. ABC did three feeds—one at 6:00 p.m., one at 6:30, and another, if there was an update and they had to, at 7:00. By 7:45 you could be at home. In short, a normal life.

  But normal or not, after thinking it over, I decided that I was happy, successful, and ensconced at NBC. Why rock the boat?

  “Tell ABC no,” I told Lee.

  ABC, however, wouldn’t take no for an answer. The network was determined to beef up its news division, which was a distant third in the ratings to CBS with Walter Cronkite and NBC with John Chancellor. (We considered ABC the schlock news network. The joke used to be if you wanted to end the Vietnam War, put it on ABC and like all their programs, it would end quickly.) Hiring the first female coanchor in broadcast history would, they felt, give the news a needed shot in the arm. It could bring more women viewers, and luring me away from the Today show might also help Good Morning America gain ground.

  ABC’s other divisions were on the fast track at the time. Fred Silverman, a programming genius, had been wooed away from CBS to head the entertainment division. With such innovative prime-time programs as the first big TV miniseries, Irwin Shaw’s twelve-hour Rich Man, Poor Man, and several popular new shows like Charlie’s Angels and Starsky and Hutch, Fred was taking ABC from last place to first in the prime-time ratings. That was before 1977, when he brought the all-time-winner miniseries Roots to the television screen.

  The other genius at ABC was Roone Arledge, who had left NBC to revolutionize ABC’s sports division. He had certainly moved on since our time together at WNBT in 1953 on the children’s show Ask the Camera. By 1976 Roone was well on his way to becoming a sports-programming legend. He created ABC’s Wide World of Sports and Monday Night Football. He also personally produced the ABC coverage of both the Winter and Summer Olympics and brought his singular “up close and personal” touch to the athletes’ stories. Between Roone and Fred, ABC’s profits were soaring: more than $29 million in 1975; $83 million in 1976; an astonishing $165 million to come the following year. So offering me a million dollars a year was no big deal to them. They could well afford it, especially since only half that amount would be borne by their news division. The rest would be paid by ABC’s entertainment division. In truth it was a bargain for ABC. It wouldn’t cost the news department much to bring Harry’s salary in line with mine, and the four Specials could bring in many millions of dollars. But I still planned to stay at NBC.

  Then, wouldn’t you know it, in April, a month after my secret meeting with ABC in Los Angeles, the million-dollar figure was somehow leaked to the press. That offer finally got NBC’s attention, but it started a nightmare for me.

  Overnight I became the “million-dollar news baby,” proffered a salary that, on the surface, was at least twice as much as anyone else was making in the news business, including Walter Cronkite. Lost in the barrage of incredulous media reporting was the fact that the ABC offer, which I hadn’t accepted, was being split between the news and entertainment divisions. I would in fact be making less at ABC News than I was at NBC News. But nobody cared. Except me.

  With ABC’s offer now public, NBC began negotiating in earnest. In fact they told Lee Stevens he could write his own ticket to keep me there. An agreement was hastily drawn up. The same salary as ABC was offering with, yes, a five-year contract. A maximum of two more years on Today and then perhaps my own Specials or a newsmagazine. Everything except for my right to be consulted in the areas that directly affected my work.

  Then the new CEO of RCA, Andy Conrad, got into the act.

  “What’s this all about?” he asked Herb Schlosser.

  “Barbara Walters may go to ABC,” Herb answered.

  “Is it about money?” Conrad asked.

  “No. We’ll pay her the same money,” Herb said.

  “Then what’s this all about?” Conrad pressed.

  “It’s about her having the right to be consulted on a new producer. And her right to be consulted on a new cohost. And her right to have input on the pieces she does. Julian and Dick don’t think that is a good idea,” Herb said.

  “Hang on to her,” Conrad said. “Give her whatever she wants.”

  With those marching orders, Dick Wald wrote a letter to be attached to the NBC agreement giving me consultation rights. And Herb Schlosser asked me to lunch. There are a lot of things I don’t remember about this time, but I remember so clearly him saying these words: “Barbara, don’t leave us. We need you.”

  Where had he been all this time?

  I have never felt so torn, personally and professionally. NBC had stalled so long by then that even with all their adjustments, I already had a taste of what a future at ABC might mean. There was now that real opportunity of having a different, easier kind of life. Thirteen years of a grueling schedule would come to an end. Not just doing Today five days a week, but Not for Women Only as well. I agonized over the next few weeks going through the pros and cons. I was driving myself crazy. I just couldn’t come to a decision.

  As my weeks of tortuous indecision went on, Lee Stevens was encouraging me to go. “What an event it will be,” he proclaimed. “You’ll be making broadcast history. You’ll be changing the world for other female journalists.” That really got to me. This wasn’t just about me. The role of women in broadcasting would be vastly improved. Could I help to bring that about? If so, what a genuine accomplishment.

  But what if I was a huge flop anchoring the news? I would be destroying what it had taken me years to achieve. There was also the question, as yet unanswered, about my potential coanchor, Harry Reasoner. I’d first met him many years before at the Democratic convention that nominated Lyndon Johnson. We’d had a rather flirtatious lunch. I’d seen him again on the trip to China with Nixon in 1972. Had he been part of the old boys’ club in China that stonewalled me? I couldn’t remember.

  I couldn’t imagine he’d be happy sharing the anchor job with me, a “girl” from the Today show. I couldn’t imagine him being happy sharing the anchor job with anyone. He’d come to ABC from CBS, leaving 60 Minutes specifically to anchor the ABC Evening News. For a while he’d shared the slot with another veteran newsman, Howard K. Smith, but somehow he’d gotten rid of Smith. And now—me. A woman he probably wouldn’t think had news credentials, who had grown up in television and never worked on a newspaper or at a wire service.

  The early indications were not reassuring. The New York Times reported that Harry had initially threatened to quit when he heard I might be coming to ABC. His attitude had improved only a little bit since. “I am trying to keep an open mind about it,” he told the Times. Another source, however, was quoted as saying Harry thought the ABC offer to me “seemed in the nature of a stunt rather than a solid journalistic move.” Said Harry to Newsweek: “I was with her on Nixon’s China trip, but I never actually saw her work. All I know about her from that trip is that she rides a bus well.” Not very encouraging words.

  Heaven knows why, but it didn’t occur to me, or for that matter, to anyone else, to arrange a meeting with Harry. That seems insane to me today. Is it possible that, with all the turmoil, I was too busy? Granted I was still at NBC, but it certainly would have been helpful to talk to him personally rather than reading what he’d said in the papers. I didn’t know how he really felt, only how ABC executives felt. And the head of ABC News, Bill Sheehan, seemed to me to be a bland, rather ineffectual fellow. I couldn’t really rely on his opinion.

  So there I was, not knowing what to do.

  Back and forth. Forth and back. Almost paralyzed by indecision, I somehow managed to get through the Today show and Not for Women Only every morning. Then I spent most of the rest of the day answering—or, more to the point, not answering—the questions from the media about my decision. Newsweek wanted to do another cover story. Time was planning a major piece. Then there was Sander Vanocur, the
television critic for the Washington Post, who called me daily for the answer, and even wanted an exclusive. I’m not one to hold a grudge, but I found it ironic that Sandy, the former NBC reporter who never shared his slot with me as a pool reporter all those years ago in India with Jackie Kennedy, was now asking me for an “exclusive.” I talked to him but I didn’t give him one. In truth I didn’t know what to say.

  Thank heaven for Alan Greenspan. Remember I told you he saw me through an agonizing time? Well, this was it. I hemmed and hawed, paced up and down, wrung my hands. NBC was home. ABC was the unknown. What to do? Alan listened to me patiently night after night while I tried to reach a decision. He was a calm and objective friend. He also did a little homework on his own. He was somewhat concerned that ABC might not be able to come up with the five million dollars guaranteed for five years. He did some calculations and determined they could. That was reassuring. ABC could pay the money if I could deliver the goods.

  By then a media frenzy was building. It may seem strange today that my staying or going would be such a story. But remember the headlines about Katie Couric when she left NBC for CBS thirty years later? Back when I was agonizing about what to do, no woman had ever been considered as anchor or coanchor on a network news program. Equally important, no newsperson was making a million dollars. There were reporters and photographers staked out in front of my apartment building. We were still living in my rent-controlled apartment on West Fifty-seventh Street, and there was no doorman to hold them at bay. The reporters were making Jackie very nervous.

  My indecision had to end. And it did, on Wednesday afternoon, April 21, in Radio City Music Hall, where I’d taken seven-year-old Jackie to see the musical classic That’s Entertainment! I was totally worn out but I felt that in the past few weeks I hadn’t been spending enough time with her. Why I thought this nostalgic review of Hollywood’s past musicals would be her cup of tea I don’t know, but it was a chance for us to hold hands and be together with no phones ringing and nobody pushing for my attention.

  Sitting in the darkened theater, still torturing myself, I remembered Richard Nixon saying to me at some point: “Don’t make any decisions when you’re exhausted.” He was right, I knew, and I was indeed exhausted. But I just couldn’t go on this way. And somewhere in the midst of watching Fred Astaire (whom I’d interviewed) and Ginger Rogers (whom I’d also interviewed) whirl so elegantly and gracefully on the screen, I decided to go to ABC. Their evening news had nowhere to go but up. I didn’t want to spend the next two years at NBC getting up at 4:30 a.m. I wanted time to be with my daughter. The expansion of the news to an hour would play to my strength. How could I go wrong?

  I held my nose and jumped.

  I called Lee at 9:00 the next morning, after I did my two hours on Today, to tell him my decision. Lee said he would call Herb Schlosser and Al Rush. Then I had to rush off to tape a whole bunch of shows for Not for Women Only and to tape a few commercials that were to run on Today.

  That is when it got ugly.

  When I returned to my office I planned to call Herb Schlosser to tell him personally I was leaving NBC. But instead the phones were ringing off the hook, with devastating news. A series of “anonymous” spokesmen from NBC had called every newspaper and newsmagazine and the wire services to announce that they had withdrawn their counteroffer, knowing full well that I had been the one to end the negotiations! I guess it was to save face before the public announcement that I was going to ABC, but nonetheless, it was very harmful to me then—and long term.

  Citing the “carnival atmosphere” surrounding the negotiations, NBC put out a series of lies. They claimed that I had demanded a private limousine and a full-time hairdresser and makeup person. How absurd! NBC had been providing these services to me, and to many others, for years. But it sounded good and greedy. “These were things that one would associate with a movie queen, not a journalist, and we had second thoughts,” one of the spokesmen told the New York Times.

  I was furious and called Dick Wald. He claimed he knew nothing about the release, which was also a lie. I found out later he had been at the meeting that morning with Julian Goodman, Herb Schlosser, Al Rush, and the publicity people who would be the actual hatchet men. It was Al Rush, the chief negotiator, who entered the meeting saying: “I think the boat has sailed. I think ABC’s got her.”

  Well, it’s a long way from “I think” in the morning to “movie queen” by the afternoon. But they had decided then and there, in that meeting, to publicly withdraw their offer. And guess what? They felt it was my fault! Not only were they angry that I was leaving, but who did I think I was anyway, that I hadn’t called them myself to tell them my decision? No one considered that I was busy doing my job, cohosting the Today show and taping back-to-back complete programs of Not for Women Only, and the commercials that were so profitable to the network.

  Herb Schlosser later claimed they had tried several times to reach me by phone but I was doing the commercials and couldn’t be reached. Ridiculous. Is it conceivable that the chairman and CEO of NBC, the president of NBC, the president of NBC News, and the vice president of program talent and acquisitions could not at least have gotten a message to me? We were all in the same building, for goodness’ sake. Which brings me back to Dick Wald, who stood in my office that afternoon and claimed he had no knowledge of the contract withdrawal and said that he’d take care of it right away.

  According to my assistant, Mary Hornickel, Dick left my office about ten minutes before six. Shortly afterward, John Chancellor came on the evening news and announced, “NBC valued Barbara’s service highly, but the negotiations for a renewal of her contract involved a million dollars and other privileges, and this afternoon NBC pulled out of the negotiations, leaving her a clear path to ABC. We wish her luck in her new job.” To his credit, John later told me that he was very upset when he found out it wasn’t true and that I had been the one to end the negotiations. But the damage had been done.

  Our mistake, Lee Stevens’s and mine, was not to send out our own release with the news that I was going to ABC. Somehow we thought NBC would be gracious enough to work out a joint release or at least discuss what should be said. We couldn’t have been more wrong.

  When I left the studio at the end of the day, the flashbulbs practically blinded me. The headlines the next day were horrendous. One paper compared me to a Radio City Rockette, a chorus girl reading the news and wanting to be taken seriously.

  Then came the drumbeat of the money. The press was relentless on the “million-dollar baby,” or, more, the “five-million-dollar baby.” Even the foreign press picked up the money story: German newspapers, French, Japanese, Indian, on and on. “Kobieta za 5 mlm dolarow” ran the headline in a Polish newspaper. I was becoming famous practically all over the world. Small consolation then, although it would be helpful years later when I wanted to interview world leaders.

  Then there were my television colleagues. Everyone from Walter Cronkite to the head of CBS News to sportscasters was clucking away about the million-dollar death of journalism. “Is Barbara a journalist or is she Cher?” asked Richard Salant, the president of CBS News. Cronkite echoed his boss’s views, claiming he had experienced “the sickening sensation that we were all going under.” But you know what? Almost every television journalist, including Harry Reasoner, walked into his boss’s office, demanded a raise—and got it. Well, you’re welcome.

  A few brave voices, especially from women, were raised in my defense. “There is, in my paranoid little mind, a vague suspicion that the controversy wouldn’t have raged as far and deep if Ms. Walters had been Mr. Walters,” wrote columnist Ellen Goodman in the Washington Post. She was echoed by Marianne Means, a syndicated columnist for Hearst newspapers, who wrote: “The controversy over Barbara Walters’ whopping $5 million contract to coanchor the ABC Nightly News smells to high heaven of sour grapes…. The real shocker is not that a coanchor person has reached the $1 million yearly figure, but that a woman has.” />
  A few men also wrote in my support. One of them was Bill Barrett, the television columnist for the Cleveland Press. “Barbara Walters deserves the opportunity,” he wrote. “She has come a long, long way—a lot farther than any man would have had to go to get to the big network news chair.” I was even the subject of an editorial in the Charleston Evening Post. “Barbara Walters is both a gifted journalist and an accomplished showman (we refuse to say showperson)…. We rejoice, with the merest trace of envy, at the elevation of a reporter to the upper bracket of stardom.”

  I was grateful for the voices raised in my defense, but I was also uncomfortable being a centerpiece in the gender wars and in the entertainment vs. news wars, the “purist” wars that saw money as the death of journalism. Journalists, I felt, are supposed to report the news, not be the news.

  I somehow continued to do the Today show. My contract with NBC had another four and a half months to run—but I was miserable. It was very tense on the set and in the halls, sort of like staying on in the same apartment with an ex-husband.

  The reports coming in about Harry Reasoner didn’t help. One article quoted a woman at ABC as saying he was a “male chauvinist pig.” What upset me the most came from Lou Weiss. He had seen Harry in a restaurant shortly after the ABC announcement, and Harry was complaining loudly, for all to hear, how he didn’t want me. Lou was so taken aback by Harry’s public outburst that he told me that maybe we had made a mistake. It was a little late for that observation.

  I wasn’t long at NBC. The network took me off the air in June. The nation’s Bicentennial celebrations were coming up, and they didn’t want me broadcasting that major event. But they also didn’t let me out of my contract. They would not let me go to ABC, or even to set foot in the ABC newsroom, until my contract expired in September. If I had, they could have sued me for breach of contract, and in their anger they just might have.

  So there was no two-hour farewell program of “Barbara’s Greatest Hits” over the last thirteen years on Today or excerpts from the many interviews I had done. It was good-bye and good riddance. On my last day I was permitted to say a few closing words to the viewers who, by devotedly watching, had so changed my life. This is what I said.