The Media Drop

On Sunday, there was a lot of speculation about ABC World News Tonight anchor Peter Jennings being “close to death” - speculation that unfortunately came to fruition late last night when Jennings succumbed to lung cancer, which he announced that he had been stricken with last April. And the manner through which I found out about Jennings’ passing was almost completely indicative of how today’s new media has changed the way people get news and information, and how the ability of the anchor position to grab hold of monstrous parts of the country’s television viewers is so different in today’s world. I had returned home last night after spending the day at Monmouth Park at their annual million dollar meet, The Haskell, and promptly fired up my TiVo to catch Sunday’s Allstate 400 at the Brickyard in Indianapolis, after spending time avoiding any and all NASCAR-related information on the way home. The race ran about three hours or so (sans most of the commercials), putting me somewhere in the 11 o’clock hour. At that point, I watched a bit of Sunday’s X Games coverage from ESPN on the DVR, finally heading off to bed after midnight sometime. Flipping through the various ESPN channels to find something enlightening to watch before going to sleep, I caught an item on the bar on the bottom of the screen that looked curious, where it usually says things like “NL,” “AL,” “AUTO,” and other sports-specific denotations - this one said “NEWS.” Waiting about 10 seconds for it to reach that point, I was totally shocked to see that it held the details of Jennings’ passing - and amazed that having not flipped open my laptop before going to bed or passing through a news network on my channel surfing had left me out of the loop for awhile - something I’m not so used to because of all the amazing technological toys I have. In a way, it kind of made me feel like most people would had they not been privy to the nightly news on a regular basis - out of touch.

What struck me most about Jennings’ death was more that while he outlasted Brokaw and Rather on the airwaves, he was never given the opportunity to leave on his own terms. As I read many accounts of his life and people’s experiences watching him do the news, I can’t help but think that many people felt the same way. As I recount seeing that broadcast from April, I remember thinking that Jennings sounded pretty bad, but at least we finally learned why he had missed a few newsworthy events, such as the Pope’s passing earlier in the year. As I re-viewed the footage a few times this morning, I can’t say that the pain isn’t clearly drawn on his face as he fought through the newscast. Sure, it’s Monday-morning quarterbacking, but it is so amazing how things like this happen and it makes you feel a bit different about a situation, based on the facts you know now.

As a kid, I always seemed to have an affinity for ABC in general, with the local WABC channel spending a lot of time on the television in my house. In high school, I always had the ABC channel set to turn on as my alarm clock (neat TV feature, huh?), as their early morning news was full of factoids as the commercial breaks began and ended. In the evenings, I typically watched Jennings’ newscast much more than the other two - something that at the time I probably couldn’t have explained why, but it just worked out that way. As I begin to think about today’s nightly newscasts, I realize that there are probably significant portions of Americans who have almost no “feelings” towards the anchors making their careers in the chair these days.

So while I can’t say I’ve been tuned in every day to ABC’s nightly newscast for the last few years, I’ll definitely agree with many others that Jennings will be missed - and that a point in our relatively short history of television news has been reached, way too quickly for my own feelings - and we might not be able to ever go back.

Additionally, the BBC has published a bunch of comments and tributes to Jennings, in a way proving how today’s world of media has gone from local to global, almost with the snap of fingers.