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VOICES: TELEVISION
Wanted:
A New Breed of Media CEOs with Old-Fashioned Values
BY
LAWRENCE K. GROSSMAN
 In
the aftermath of September 11, the nation needs a new breed of
media company chief executives who "exercise their power
in a way that recognizes there's a public trust" and have
a "higher order of priority than delivering a return to shareholders."
That heretical idea was delivered to an approving audience at
a forum in Manhattan in November by none other than AOL Time Warner's
Gerald M. Levin.
The c.e.o. of the world's biggest multimedia conglomerate (who
is retiring from that job in May) went "on the record"
to commit his own company to new priorities for a new day. "We
are not going to do a mathematical scorecard on something that
is our obligation," Levin said. "We will spend whatever
it takes; we will support whatever CNN, Time, and AOL want to
do. Our obligation [is] not to just inform, but to provide insight
and understanding about what's going on that affects everybody's
life around the world today."
So far, Levin's fellow media moguls do not appear to share his
public-service priorities. In November, The New York Times reported
that Viacom's CBS had ordered budget cuts in its most important
news show, 60 Minutes, blaming the increased costs of covering
the war in Afghanistan. Longtime competitors CBS and ABC have
taken the unprecedented step of holding discussions to merge their
overseas news bureaus and personnel to save money, a move that
would further diminish healthy competition in gathering and reporting
news. Also in November, a national survey of local TV news taken
last summer by the Project for Excellence in Journalism reported
that half the news directors who responded said they had to make
budget cuts or layoffs at their stations; two-thirds said they
were filling more time slots with local news -- whose mainstays
are often crime and celebrities -- because it is cheaper than
other programming. While the survey was conducted shortly before
the World Trade Center attack, nothing has happened since in local
TV news to suggest that it will not continue to remain (as the
study suggested) "on dangerous ground."
Like much else after September 11, Levin's call for a new breed
of public-spirited corporate managers represents a significant
departure from the single-minded focus on financial priorities
that prevailed in the days before the world changed. The nation's
most celebrated c.e.o. then was chairman Jack Welch of GE, described
in the October 1 New Yorker as "a feared and confrontational
manager, with a fanatical devotion to cutting costs and boosting
profits." Before September 11, Jack's "fanatical devotion"
to the bottom line was viewed as the model to emulate. His memoir
with the macho title, Jack: Straight from the Gut, published the
week the World Trade Center was destroyed, described yesterday's
values: Business is a game, played to be won. And winning is defined
by only one thing -- how much money you can make.
When GE bought NBC in 1986, I was president of NBC News. In his
book, Jack complains that I operated "under the theory that
networks should lose money while covering the news in the name
of journalistic integrity." The two of us, he said, "were
on different planets." I take his complaint as a compliment.
Under the law, broadcasters, who hold valuable licenses to use
the public's airwaves, are considered public trustees. I thought,
and still do, that responsible worldwide network news coverage,
which is costly, is an obligation to be borne by the network broadcasters
as a loss leader if need be. I come from the Bill Paley school
of network leadership. At a year-end dinner for CBS News correspondents,
presided over by the network's founding chairman, Charles Collingwood
expressed concern that TV news was going to cost Paley, who was
also the company's biggest stockholder, a heck of a lot of money.
"Don't worry about that," Paley replied. "You guys
cover the news. I've got Jack Benny to make money for me."
Welch's priorities were entirely different. He made it clear that
he would judge NBC News no differently than any other GE division.
News would be expected to make the same profit margins they did.
Welch was disdainful of any other approach. The news division,
he said, had no greater obligation to provide public service than
those GE lines that manufacture refrigerators, light bulbs, or
jet engines. For Welch, as one critic put it, the financial perspective
was the only one that mattered. That tunnel vision helped produce
an era of network news that focused more on nonfiction entertainment
than on the information citizens need about a dangerous and vulnerable
world.
News from faraway places is front and center again. Coverage of
that news is expensive. Gerry Levin says we need a new breed with
new values to lead multimedia companies. I say we need a new breed
with the old-fashioned values of CBS's Bill Paley, NBC's Grant
Tinker, and ABC's Tom Murphy, who in their day were as concerned
about the public trust as they were about the bottom line.
Lawrence
K. Grossman , a former president of NBC News and PBS, is a regular
columnist for CJR.
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