"…so give this new anchor team…a fair break. If you don’t, I promise you, the network will just put another comedy show in this time slot.
And then you’ll be sorry."
Classic!!
Huh! I hadn’t even heard that Koppel was quitting until I read this post. I admit I’ve been a bit out of the news lately, but I heard more about Oprah’s 20th anniversary than this. It seems a lot more subdued than when Rather left.
Great parting words.
Interesting fact: Ted Koppel was born to German Jewish refugees in Britain, and was in London during the Blitz. He didn’t move to the US till he was a teenager. I was amazed when I heard this, because even though he has a distinctive voice, I’ve never thought of him as having any kind of (non-American) accent.
Wow that is interesting. I’d always imagined him assembled by robots in a sterile laboratory.
My recollection is that Nightline started with the Iranian Hostage Crisis and they vowed to come on every night with an update. When the crisis went on and on they kept it going and branched out when the story got kind of old.
What did it replace?
I don’t remember what it immediately replaced, but ABC had been competing against The Tonight Show for years with Tonight Show clones, involving people like Dick Cavett and Pat Sajac.
Probably the kind of thing Koppel was referring to.
I’m going to miss Koppel and Nightline. One of the last vestiges of class anywhere on TV news.
Since he was a famous American network news anchor I just assumed Koppel was Canadian.
The Wally Pipp Comedy Hour.
The reason why you don’t remember what ABC had on at 11:30 before “Nightline” is that they really didn’t have anything. The network had essentially conceded late night to Carson and was using the slot as a dumping ground for reruns, busted pilots, and an occasional movie or special that was deemed unacceptable to run during prime time. Cavett’s show had been long gone by the time of the Iranian Hostage Crisis and Pat Sajak’s show was on CBS and didn’t debut until 1989. In 1980, ABC did launch the SNL clone “Fridays” that ran for two years but that was after Koppel’s program had already started.
I know Cavett’s had bbeen earlier, and Sajac may have been later, but in ther big citioes I’m pretty sure that ABC had *something[/i[ scgheduled egularly opposite Tonight – it wasn’t a hodgepodge of whatever they felt like.
Fridays, as the name implies, only ran on Fridays.
Another reason for his comment is that several years ago ABC approached David Letterman about moving to ABC and doing his show at 11:30pm there. In other words, they were willing to lose Nightline if they could replace it with Letterman.
There was so little news left in his show that it should have just been called a newsmagazine.
The couple of ABC affiliates I was aware of at the time had their own schedules of syndicated programming in that time slot. In fact, I can recall at least one ABC affiliate that continued to run their syndicated reruns and ran Nightline afterwards, alf an hour after the ABC scheduled time.
Nightline replaced that one comedy show that they keep promising to bring back: “And Then You’ll Be Sorry.”
Sorry
Ba-dum tish!
Thank you, folks, she’ll be here all week! 