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News happens in inconvenient places at unexpected times, while sports can concentrate on unpredictable events at predictable places. CBS had 23 cameras in place at the Super Bowl; Arledge, with a camera at every hole and a few to spare, used 26 on the U.S. Open, and will use more than 100 at the Winter Olympics. Sports reporters shy from criticizing the powers that be in sports but are airily bolder than news reporters in commenting on and criticizing the players and coaches they cover. They don't need to worry about the political clout, or the dignity, of people they show (dignity in hockey?). They are freer to rearrange reality. Roone Arledge invented prime-time Olympics—singling out anticipated stars to build up in advance, juggling tapes, and the clock to show the most dramatic events at peak hours. Purists may object that Arledge's rewed-up Olympics test like the sprawly Olympics of actuality, but the test is the same as for orange-juice concentrate: more people seem to prefer it to the real thing.
Over at CBS News, Van Sauter, a large and relaxed ex-newspaperman and station manager, thinks news can gain from the energy of sports coverage. He believes that sports bring the viewer (in a phrase he found in a textbook somewhere) "the sweet resolution of anxiety." Viewers make an emotional investment in a player or team that intensifies their watching interest, and, by the end of the game, their hopes have been satisfied or their worries confirmed. Sauter thinks viewers also invest emotionally in people they see in the news. Trouble is, there is no final score anxieties, the end of a newscast, and the evening news resolves few anxieties.
The three networks are now about on a par in the ratings, with CBS hoping to build on the narrow lead it enjoys under Dan Rather, with NBC about to replace John Chancellor with Tom Brokaw, and with Arledge still seeking the right anchormanly combination. There is no assurance of a sweet resolution of anxiety.