‘Nightline’ On Top For Late Night Anchorman Credits Live Showings, Strong Lead-In, Big Continuing Stories

The new king of late night didn’t make it to the top cracking jokes.

Ted Koppel, anchor and managing editor of ABC News “Nightline,” plays it straight.

Considered by many to be television’s premiere journalist, Koppel is No. 1 in the 1995 ratings race.

Since January, “Nightline” has attracted an average of 7,010,000 viewers per show. That’s ahead of CBS’ “Late Show With David Letterman” (in toe-to-toe competition between 11:30 and midnight) and its audience of 6,800,000, and the 6,620,000 tuned in to NBC’s “Tonight Show” starring Jay Leno.

“Ratings? Who cares about ratings?” says Koppel, facetiously feigning lack of interest during a recent interview.

“Nightline,” in fact, has been a strong contender for much of its 15-year history, but this year it has been on a roll.

“It’s a variety of things,” says the 55-year-old anchorman, mentioning first a 17 percent increase in the show’s live clearances - that is, the number of stations that run the show in its intended time slot. (It’s still fewer than Letterman or Leno overall, but a crucial competitive improvement.)

Then there’s ABC’s winning prime-time lineup as a lead-in, which comes at the same time CBS’ failing schedule is hobbling Letterman (whose ratings have dropped 20 percent compared with the first quarter of ‘94, while Leno and “Nightline,” in contrast, are both up about 4 percent).

“And it doesn’t hurt when you have running, major stories,” says Koppel, getting to perhaps the most significant factor. “The Oklahoma City story is exactly the kind of story that I think ‘Nightline’ was made to cover.”

And it is the story that put “Nightline” over the top.

Five of the “Nightline” Top 10 in 1995 have been Oklahoma City-related stories.

But let’s not forget the trial of O.J. Simpson.

Koppel says, without hesitation or apology, that “the ratings clearly have gone up every time that we have covered that as a subject.”

Nevertheless, he maintains that “Nightline” has not overplayed the story, touching base with the trial in recent weeks once every six or seven nights.

That’s just a reflection of public interest, says Koppel.

“It seems to combine, if not all, then most of the elements that the consumers of mass news in the United States cannot get enough of,” Koppel says. “It’s a crime of violence involving a rich, famous person - in this particular case someone who is more famous than most.

“There is the racial element. There is the marital violence element. There is the element of O.J. Simpson having been - to many people, both black and white - a sort of folk hero. And when someone like that becomes involved in a double-murder charge and is able to hire some of the more colorful attorneys on the American legal scene … I don’t think anyone need apologize for being interested.

“Interested to the exclusion of everything else? Yeah. I think we need to apologize for that, but we don’t do that.”

The Oklahoma City bombing overshadowed the Simpson case, albeit temporarily, jolting viewers out of their O.J.-induced trance.

From Koppel’s perspective, “The jolt had less to do with the fact that a lot of people were killed, although that clearly was a major element, (than) the realization that this could very possibly have been committed by Americans and the sort of Americans that we in this country, in our propensity for cliches, tend to regard as American Americans.”

And that was just part of it.

“Then comes the realization,” the anchorman continues, “that there are tens of thousands of people who seem to understand at least the roots of the frustration that lie behind an incident like this.”

As for President Clinton’s comments about hate on the airwaves and its possible connections to such acts of violence?

“I certainly sympathize with what the president says, but if he means to translate that into limiting .. freedom of speech … I would object. I think we’re far more in need of good taste than we are of tougher legislation.”

But the Oklahoma City story seems likely to fade faster than the case of Simpson, which Koppel predicts will be with us for another year or two.

“If he’s found guilty, they’ll appeal,” he says. “If he’s found not guilty, you will have the start of the ‘not guilty O.J. industry’ that will begin cranking into high gear because he’ll have to start earning back some of that money that has been spent on all the attorneys.

“If it’s a hung jury, we’ll have the next O.J. trial, the selection of the next O.J. jury. …”

Koppel has more than a year left on his contract with ABC News, though he has a window in three months that gives him an out if he wants one.

ABC wanted him to sign a longer contract, but Koppel says, laughing, “I have always operated on the premise that short contracts are better than long contracts. When you pit an individual against a huge corporation, the only power that the individual has is to put the barrel of a gun in his own mouth and say, ‘Give me what I want or I’ll shoot.”’

Fortunately, he says, “At the moment, things couldn’t be better and I have absolutely no intention of exercising the option.”