(3 of 5)
Meanwhile ABC suddenly surged into a lead in the ratings race over its rivals for the first time in years (TIME, March 15) and then settled into a strong second position not far behind CBS. The ABC Evening News, however, did not share in the new-found prosperity of the entertainment shows. ABC news executives, under marching orders to match the network's entertainment-program success, tried almost everything: the set was redesigned to resemble something vaguely like a reception room in a corporate headquarters; news items were compressed and a batch of writers was brought in to turn out sprightlier copy for Reasoner. Result: Reasoner still trailed badly with 19% of the potential viewing audience, to 24% for Chancellor and 28% for Cronkite.
Last March NBC made Walters an offer to renew her contract, which expires in September, on roughly the same terms as her old one. She refused, but left the door open for a better NBC offer. While on vacation in Los Angeles a few weeks ago, she was invited to lunch in a private dining room at ABC'S West Coast headquarters in the Century City complex. Present were Sheehan, ABC Chairman Leonard Goldenson, ABC President Elton Rule and ABC Television President Fred Pierce. They sketched an offer virtually identical to the one she accepted last week. "I was surprised," Walters recalls. "I'd read that they were looking for a woman for the Evening News, but I thought they'd offer me a spot on their morning show, opposite Today, and I would never do that." Today was "her" show, she says, and she would never go on a program competing with it.
First Crack. Walters returned to New York and informed her NBC bosses that she had been talking to another bidder. They quickly countered with their own million-dollar package: four news specials a year, her own magazine-format show, a permanent parole from Today in six months and "participation" in the NBC Nightly News, with first crack at a co-anchor spot later. For days, Walters worried over the offers. "At NBC I'm at home, secure," she told TIME'S Patricia Beckert. "Why would I want to go to ABC? Well, because it would be a challenge. They want to improve their news. If anything changed there because of me, you could see the results directly. But I don't know what I want."
Walters had planned not to make up her mind until this week, but after a particularly wakeful night at midweek, she called her agent, Lou Weiss of the William Morris Agency, and said that she would join ABC. Later that day NBC released a testy statement that it had withdrawn its offer. The network said that it objected to the "carnival hoopla," and alleged that Walters' agents at William Morris had demanded, among other concessions, a limousine, a hairdresser and full-time flack of her own. Walters called the NBC statement "a lie" and denied that the offer had been revoked. Said she: "I already have a limousine and a hairdresser."