lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) (11/29/83)
n026 0917 26 Nov 83
BC-TV-NOTES
(Culture)
By PETER KERR
c.1983 N.Y. Times News Service
NEW YORK - It started two weeks ago, the night the NBC switchboard
lit up, just minutes after the network had announced over the air
that ''NBC News Overnight,'' the critically acclaimed late-night news
program, was being canceled.
Then came the letters. More than 1,500 protests and condolences
poured into NBC's Rockefeller Center headquarters over the next two
weeks, some including contributions of $5, $10 and $100 to make up
for the program's shortfall in advertising revenues. Others came with
poems and tape-recorded songs.
In Washington, a committee of viewers was formed to pressure NBC
executives into changing their minds. In New York, stenciled messages
appeared on street corners, begging the network to reconsider. In
Boston, a television news crew this week recorded the blurred image
of a striking Greyhound Bus driver wrestled into a police wagon by
several police officers; the driver's last words, screeched at the
camera before he was dragged away were, ''Save 'Overnight!'''
As the folk singer Arlo Guthrie once said: If enough people do it,
they'll think it's a movement.
And so last week they - in the person of Grant Tinker, the chairman
of NBC - thought enough of the protest by ''Overnight'' fans to
re-examine the cancellation of the program. But after one more check
of the ratings and finances, Tinker called a member of the program's
staff last Tuesday and said, with regrets, that the verdict was still
thumbs down. The last broadcast is scheduled for next Friday night.
Although ''Overnight'' had attracted loyal viewers, their enthusiasm
was not sufficiently shared by advertisers, according to a source at
NBC News, who said that the program was losing the network $3.5
million a year.
The program was begun in July 1982, to compete with the Turner
Broadcasting Co., which was offering its 24-hour Cable News Network
and Headline Service to network affilitates. But ''Overnight'' soon
developed a character and a following of its own.
''I guess we developed into something of a cult program,'' said
Deborah Johnson, the executive producer of the program, which is
broadcast between 1:30 and 2:30 a.m. Tuesday through Friday and 2
a.m. to 3 a.m. Saturday. ''It was partly the intimate relationship
you have with viewers at that hour. But it was also the anarchistic
mix of things. People found us and couldn't believe that we were
really on.''
The program frequently tried to give new or unusual perspectives to
news stories. At times it showed reports from Canadian, British,
Soviet, Polish, South Korean and Nicaraguan television. Its segment,
''Not Ready for Prime Time News,'' often presented correspondents'
reports that did not or could not get on the network's other news
broadcasts.
''Overnight'' once showed a lengthy report on the chief of
Thailand's family-planning agency, who conducted vasectomy and
contraceptive fairs around the country. On Thanksgiving 1982 the
program broadcast a story about Wilbur the Jogging Turkey, a
Wisconsin fowl shown trotting to the theme music of the film
''Chariots of Fire.''
As of last Wednesday night, the program's two anchors, Linda
Ellerbee and Bill Schechner, were still hard at work. Before air time
they were both clad in blue workshirts, he in jeans, she in army
khakis, as they typed, read wire-service copy and munched on popcorn.
Just before airtime, they changed into the more traditional garb of
newscasters. With some pride and sadness, the two pointed to the
piles of letters building up in their offices.
''We have always depended,'' Miss Ellerbee said, ''on the kindness
of strangers.''
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