{"id":5125,"date":"2021-12-12T08:28:28","date_gmt":"2021-12-12T13:28:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/?p=5125"},"modified":"2021-12-12T08:28:32","modified_gmt":"2021-12-12T13:28:32","slug":"watching-brian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dahlman.online\/index.php\/2021\/12\/12\/watching-brian\/","title":{"rendered":"Watching Brian"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This is the next in the “Sunday Story” series – no politics here – just a story about Mom and Dad and the Nightly News.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thinking of Mom<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I thought a lot about my Mom Thursday night.  She passed away ten years ago at the age of ninety-three.  Dad and Mom lived a marvelous life, up to the last couple of years.  Throughout it all there were \u201cconstants\u201d; things that they did every day.  One of those was don\u2019t go to bed before eleven.  They might well have slept on the couch in the family room in front of the TV, Dad probably since eight, but never went to bed, never before the local news came on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And another of those constants was the network Nightly News<\/em>.  Dad ran a television station in Dayton in the 1960\u2019s, and the Nightly News<\/em> was part of the business.  He watched how his local newscasters did with Ed Hamlin at the anchor and Omar Williams on sports. It was one of the main ways to evaluate the station.   The network news brought viewers to the program, and the television business was all about selling advertising.  So Dad watched the local and network news religiously.  It was the end of his business day, whether he was still at work that late, or already at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Dayton station was an NBC<\/em> affiliate for most of those years, and the network broadcast was the Huntley-Brinkley Report<\/em>.  Chet Huntley and David Brinkley were \u201cold school\u201d reporters, out of the mold of CBS<\/em>\u2019s Edward R Murrow and his prot\u00e9g\u00e9, Walter Cronkite.  So NBC<\/em> was the default choice for news in our household, with the exception of a couple years when Dad switched the Dayton station to ABC<\/em>.  Then it was a young Canadian named Peter Jennings who anchored the network desk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anchor Man<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

But NBC<\/em> stuck, even when Dad was promoted out of the Dayton station and we moved to corporate headquarters in Cincinnati.  Chet Huntley retired, and Brinkley moved to ABC<\/em>.  But we were loyal to the new guy, John Chancellor, who took over the reins.  When national crises hit, from Watergate to Presidential elections, it was the NBC<\/em> crew that talked us through the details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a decade starting in 1970 (\u201cWLW-D, Your Stations for the Seventies\u201d was the jingle), Chancellor led the way.  Then, after a \u201ctryout\u201d by Roger Mudd, the younger Tom Brokaw, the Today Show <\/em>host, took over.  He stayed at the anchor desk for twenty-one years, and became the senior mentor of NBC<\/em> News.  My Mom developed a close \u201crelationship\u201d with Tom Brokaw, as he brought every crisis and triumph personally to our family room.  But waiting in the wings was Mom\u2019s favorite, the White House Correspondent for NBC<\/em> News, a young, clearly ambitious reporter named Brian Williams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the last few Brokaw years it became obvious that Brian was the heir-apparent.  There was even a mock \u201cpress conference\u201d with Brokaw as the subject, when Williams stood up and carefully inquired as to Brokaw\u2019s health and well-being.  It was a joke \u2013 but it really wasn\u2019t.  Williams was ready for the anchor chair, the senior position in NBC<\/em> News.  And after twenty-one years, Brokaw was aging, and more importantly, struggling to annunciate.  The night time talk show hosts were putting marbles in their mouths, making fun of him.  Still \u2013 Tom Brokaw had the gravitas to take us through the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Bush-Gore election,  9-11, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Chair<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Brokaw retired from the chair in 2004.  He didn\u2019t stay retired long, as NBC<\/em> suffered the incredible loss of their Chief Washington Political Correspondent, Tim Russert, to a massive heart attack in spring.  Brokaw took over Meet the Press<\/em>, and helped lead Mom and the nation through the election of 2004.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Brian finally had the Nightly News<\/em>.  Mom no longer talked of NBC<\/em>, or the evening news.  She waited to watch Brian.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He led NBC<\/em> for a decade.  Even when Mom was struggling, her lungs calcified and unable to absorb enough oxygen, she still watched \u201cBrian\u201d every evening.  She looked to him for guidance during the hurricanes of 2005, and celebrated with him the election of the first African-American President, and the passage of Obamacare.  Mom loved Brian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mom passed away in 2011. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brian Williams had a \u201cmemory conflation\u201d in 2015.  He described a memory of a missile attack on his helicopter in Iraq.  But that really didn\u2019t happen, and Brian was removed as the NBC<\/em> anchor.  Lester Holt took over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was lots of discussion at the time about why Brian Williams did that.  Was he just embellishing stories to make himself more important?  Had he been warned so starkly in the war zone, that somehow the warning became an \u201cevent\u201d in his mind?  Or had he described that exact same event so many times, that it became a real \u201cthing\u201d for him, an experience he thought he actually had?  He too became fodder for the late night monologues.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exile on Cable<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

After six months, Brian came back \u2013 but not to the Nightly News<\/em> desk.  He was exiled to cable, the \u201cbreaking news\u201d anchor whenever MSNBC<\/em> went live to an event.  He was doing school shootings, hurricanes,  and tornadoes, directing coverage and commentary from New York.  Seemingly, he wasn\u2019t allowed to leave Rockefeller Center, virtually strapped to the anchor chair.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then the election of 2016 got so convoluted, that MSNBC<\/em> needed someone to summarize the daily events for their viewers.  Brian began a new program, The 11th Hour<\/em> from 11 to midnight.  And for the last five years, Brian Williams helped to detangle the Trump Administration and the world.  He brought in the experts, from historians to commentators to doctors, to declassify all of the craziness that was Trump, Impeachment, Covid and now the Biden Administration.  Brian became our nightly ritual, instead of the comedians.  I learned a lot from him between 11 and 12, even if I seldom actually saw the end of his show.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brian Williams signed off The 11th Hour<\/em> for the last time Thursday night. He says he\u2019s headed into real retirement, but that remains to be seen.  I stayed awake to listen to others praise him, and hear Brian\u2019s final words as an NBC<\/em> anchor.  And at the end, I thought how sad Mom would be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 I know I am.<\/p>\n\n\n\n