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| Birth Name(s) : Peter Jennings |
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Full Peter Jennings Biography
Peter Charles Archibald Ewart Jennings, CM (July 29, 1938 – August 7, 2005) was a Canadian-American journalist and news anchor. He was the sole anchor of ABC's World News Tonight from 1983 until his death in 2005 of complications from lung cancer. A high-school dropout, he transformed himself into one of America's most prominent journalists.
Jennings started reporting for ABC at its New York news bureau. At the time, ABC lagged behind the more established news divisions of NBC and CBS, and the network was trying to attract younger viewers. On February 1, 1965, ABC plucked the fresh-faced Canadian from the field and placed him at the anchor desk of Peter Jennings With the News, then a 15-minute nightly newscast. He replaced Ron Cochran, a fellow Canadian. At 26, Jennings was, and remains, the youngest-ever U.S. network news anchor. "ABC was in bad shape at the time," Jennings said. "They were willing to try anything, and, to demonstrate the point, they tried me."
An inexperienced Jennings had a hard time keeping up with his rivals at the other networks, and he could not compete with the venerable newscasts of Walter Cronkite at CBS and Chet Huntley and David Brinkley at NBC. American audiences disliked Jennings' Canadian English accent. He pronounced lieutenant as "leftenant", mangled the pronunciation of "Appomattox," and misidentified the Marines' Hymn as Anchors Aweigh at Lyndon Johnson's presidential inauguration; his general ignorance of American affairs and culture led critics to deride Jennings as a "glamorcaster". "It was a little ridiculous when you think about it," he later reflected. "A 26-year-old trying to compete with Cronkite, Huntley and Brinkley. I was simply unqualified." After three rocky years at the anchor desk, Jennings called it quits and became a foreign correspondent.
On August 9, 1983, ABC announced that Jennings had signed a four-year contract with the network and would become the sole anchor and senior editor for World News Tonight on September 5. Jennings would anchor the program from New York City, the program's new base of operations. The announcement signaled a generational shift in the evening news broadcasts, and the beginning of what the media would deem the "Big Three" era of Jennings, Dan Rather of CBS, and Tom Brokaw of NBC. Rather had already been elevated to anchor in 1981 after the retirement of Walter Cronkite, and Brokaw of NBC Nightly News was set to become sole anchor the same day as Jennings. At the time, Jennings expressed apprehension that the impending competition among the three newsmen was at risk of becoming superficial. "With me, Brokaw and Rather, I recognize that there will be the factor of three pretty faces," he said. "That's an inevitable byproduct of television. But if that is what it comes down to in terms of the approach we take, if our approach is that singular, then we will all have made a mistake."
Despite this somewhat shaky start at the anchor desk, Jennings' broadcast began to climb in the ratings. Jennings was praised for his performance during the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, when he anchored ABC's coverage of the event for 11 straight hours. By 1989, competition among the three nightly newscasts had risen to fever pitch. When the Loma Prieta earthquake struck the San Francisco Bay area, media pundits praised Jennings and ABC News for their prompt on-air response, while criticizing the delayed reaction of Tom Brokaw and NBC News. The next month, Brokaw redeemed himself by scooping the other networks with news of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was World News Tonight, however, that ended the year at the top; ABC's evening newscast spent the last 13 weeks of the year in first place, and its average ratings for the entire year beat CBS for the first time.
No event tested Jennings' anchoring duties more than the September 11 attacks of 2001. He anchored ABC's coverage of that day's events for 17 straight hours, an effort described as "Herculean" by television critics. He, like other network news anchors, was widely praised for guiding Americans through the tragedy. At one point, Jennings broke his composure after receiving phone calls from his children. "We do not very often make recommendations for people's behavior from this chair," he said, "but...if you're a parent, you've got a kid in some other part of the country, call them up. Exchange observations."
e.^ The immense scope of The Century caused headaches for those developing it. It survived three major changes in narrative approach, three different executive producers, and various attempts to axe the entire project. By the time it aired, all of the people interviewed for their anecdotes of World War I had passed away. Jennings, though, downplayed criticism of the program's rocky history. "Name me a news organization that doesn't have some degree of turmoil on a major project," he said. "What people care about in The New York Times is what gets in the paper. It's the same with us. There are people out there who think their job is to set the bar for us, but the bar for me is set by the audience, and I think there is a real hunger out there from everyone I encounter to relive and experience and learn from what's gone on over the last 100 years." |
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